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THE CHOIR INVISIBLE 


** O may I join the choir invisible 

Of those immortal dead who live again 
In minds made better by their presence. . . , 

feed pure love. 

Beget the smiles that have no cruelty, 

Be the sweet presence of a good diffused 
And in diffusion evermore intense. 

So shall I join the choir invisible 
Whose music is the gladness of the world.” 

George Eliot 


THE CHOIR INVISIBLE 


BY 

JAMES LANE ALLEN 

AUTHOR OF “ SUMMER IN ARCADY," “A KENTUCKY 
CARDINAL," ETC,, ETC. 


Nein gorit 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 

1899 


All rights reserved 


•■fhizl 

a 

7 


Copyright, 1897, 

By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 

Set up and electrotyped April, 1897. Reprinted May, June, 
July twice, August twice, September twice, October three times, 
December twice, 1897 ; January twice, February, March, April, 
September, October, November, 1898 ; January twice, 1899. 




Norfajoolj 

J. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith 
Norwood Mast. U.S.A. 



i:- JHg JHotj^cr 

6 



AUTHOR’S NOTE 


The author published a few years ago a story 
entitled *^John Gray.” Some of the material of that 
story has been used in the work herewith published 
as “The Choir Invisible.” 








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THE CHOIR INVISIBLE 


I 

The middle of a fragrant afternoon of May in 
the green wilderness of Kentucky: the year 

1795. 

High overhead ridges of many-peaked cloud 
— the gleaming, wandering Alps of the blue 
ether; outstretched far below, the warming 
bosom of the earth, throbbing with the hope 
of maternity. Two spirits abroad in the air, 
encountering each other and passing into one : 
the spirit of scentless spring left by melting 
snows and the spirit of scented summer born 
with the earliest buds. The road through the 
forest one of those wagon-tracks that were 
being opened from the clearings of the settlers, 
and that wound along beneath trees of which 
those now seen in Kentucky are the unworthy 
survivors — oaks and walnuts, maples and elms, 
centuries old, gnarled, massive, drooping, majes- 
tic, through whose arches the sun hurled down 

B 1 


2 


The Choir Invisible 


only some solitary spear of gold, and over whose 
gray-mossed roots some cold brook crept in 
silence ; with here and there billowy open 
spaces of wild rye, buffalo grass, and clover 
on which the light fell in sheets of radiance ; 
with other spots so dim that for ages no shoot 
had sprung from the deep black mould ; blown 
to and fro across this wagon-road, odours of ivy, 
pennyroyal and mint, mingled with the fra- 
grance of the wild grape ; flitting to and fro 
across it, as low as the violet-beds, as high 
as the sycamores, unnumbered kinds of birds, 
some of which like the paroquet are long since 
vanished. 

Down it now there came in a drowsy amble 
an old white bob-tail horse, his polished coat 
shining like silver when he crossed an expanse 
of sunlight, fading into spectral paleness when 
he passed under the rayless trees ; his fore- 
top floating like a snowy plume in the light 
wind ; his unshod feet, half-covered by the fet- 
locks, stepping noiselessly over the loamy 
earth ; the rims of his nostrils expanding like 
flexible ebony ; and in his eyes that look of 
peace which is never seen but in those of 
petted animals. 


The Choir Invisible 


3 


He had on an old bridle with knots of blue 
violets hanging down at his ears ; over his broad 
back was spread a blanket of buffalo-skin ; on 
this rested a worn black side-saddle, and sit- 
ting in the saddle was a girl, whom every 
young man of the town not far away knew to 
be Amy Falconer, and whom many an old 
pioneer dreamed of when he fell asleep beside 
his rifle and his hunting-knife in his lonely 
cabin of the wilderness. She was perhaps the 
first beautiful girl of aristocratic birth ever seen 
in Kentucky, and the first of the famous train 
of those who for a hundred years since have 
wrecked or saved the lives of the men. 

Her pink calico dress, newly starched and 
ironed, had looked so pretty to her when she 
had started from home, that she had not been 
able to bear the thought of wearing over it this 
lovely afternoon her faded, mud-stained riding- 
skirt ; and it was so short that it showed, rest- 
ing against the saddle-skirt, her little feet 
loosely fitted into new bronze morocco shoes. 
On her hands she had drawn white half-hand 
mittens of home-knit ; and on her head she 
wore an enormous white scoop-bonnet, lined 
with pink and tied under her chin in a huge 


The Choir Invisible 


A 

white muslin bow. Her face, hidden away 
under the pink-and-white shadow, showed such 
tints of pearl and rose that it seemed carved 
from the inner surface of a sea-shell. Her eyes 
were gray, almond-shaped, rather wide apart, 
with an expression changeful and playful, but 
withal rather shrewd and hard ; her light- 
brown hair, as fine as unspun silk, was parted 
over her brow and drawn simply back behind 
her ears ; and the lips of her little mouth 
curved against each other, fresh, velvet-like, 
smiling. 

On she rode down the avenue of the primeval 
woods ; and Nature seemed arranged to salute 
her as some imperial presence; with the wav- 
ing of a hundred green boughs above and on 
each side ; with a hundred floating odours ; with 
the flash and rush of bright wings ; with the 
swift play of nimble forms up and down the 
boles of trees; and all the sweet confusion of 
innumerable melodies. 

Then one of those trifles happened that con- 
tain the history of our lives, as a drop of dew 
draws into itself the majesty and solemnity of 
the heavens. 

From the pommel of the side-saddle there 


The Choir Invisible 


5 


dangled a heavy roll of home-spun linen, which 
she was taking to town to her aunt’s merchant 
as barter for queen’s-ware pitchers ; and behind 
this roll of linen, fastened to a ring under the 
seat of the saddle, was swung a bundle tied up 
in a large blue-and-white checked cotton neck- 
kerchief. Whenever she fidgeted in the saddle, 
or whenever the horse stumbled as he often did 
because he was clumsy and because the road 
was obstructed by stumps and roots, the string 
by which this bundle was tied slipped a little 
through the loosening knot and the bundle 
hung a little lower down. Just where ' the 
wagon-trail passed out into the broader public 
road leading from Lexington to Frankfort and 
the travelling began to be really good, the horse 
caught one of his forefeet against the loop of a 
root, was thrown violently forward, and the bun- 
dle slipped noiselessly from the saddle to the 
earth. 

She did not see it. She indignantly gathered 
the reins more tightly in one hand, pushed back 
her bonnet, which now hung down over her 
eyes like the bill of a pelican, and applied her 
little switch of wild cherry to the horse’s flank 
with such vehemence that a fly which was about 


6 


The Choir Invisible 


to alight on that spot went to the other side. 
The old horse himself — he bore the peaceable 
name of William Penn — merely gave one of 
the comforting switches of his bob-tail with 
which he brushed away the thought of any 
small annoyance, and stopped a moment to 
nibble at the wayside cane mixed with purple- 
blossoming peavine. 

Out of the lengthening shadows of the woods 
the girl and the horse passed on toward the little 
town ; and far behind them in the public road 
lay the lost bundle. 


II 


In the open square on Cheapside in Lexing- 
ton there is now a bronze statue of John Breck- 
inridge. Not far from where it stands the 
pioneers a hundred years ago had built the 
first log school-house of the town. 

Poor old school-house, long since become 
scattered ashes ! Poor little backwoods acade- 
micians, driven in about sunrise, driven out 
toward dusk! Poor little tired backs with 
nothing to lean against ! Poor little bare feet 
that could never reach the floor! Poor little 
droop-headed figures, so sleepy in the long 
summer days, so afraid to fall asleep ! Long, 
long since, little children of the past, your backs 
have become straight enough, measured on the 
same cool bed ; sooner or later your feet, wher- 
ever wandering, have found their resting-places 
in the soft earth ; and all your drooping heads 
have gone to sleep on the same dreamless pillow 
and there are sleeping. And the young school- 
master, who seemed exempt from frailty while 
7 


8 


The Choir Invisible 


he guarded like a sentinel that lone outpost of 
the alphabet — he too has long since joined the 
choir invisible of the immortal dead. But there 
is something left of him though more than a 
century has passed away : something that has 
wandered far down the course of time to us like 
the faint summer fragrance of a young tree long 
since fallen dead in its wintered forest — like a 
dim radiance yet travelling onward into space 
from an orb turned black and cold — like an old 
melody, surviving on and on in the air without 
any instrument, without any strings. 

John Gray, the school-master. At four 
o’clock that afternoon and therefore earlier 
than usual, he was standing on the hickory block 
which formed the doorstep of the school-house, 
having just closed the door behind him for the 
day. Down at his side, between the thumb and 
forefinger of one hand, hung his big black hat, 
which was decorated with a tricoloured cockade, 
to show that he was a member of the Demo- 
cratic Society of Lexington, modelled after the 
Democratic Society of Philadelphia and the 
Jacobin clubs of France. In the open palm of 
the other lay his big silver English lever watch 
with a glass case and broad black silk fob. 


The Choir Invisible 


9 


A young fellow of powerful build, lean, mus- 
cular; wearing simply but with gentlemanly 
care a suit of black, which was relieved around 
his wrists and neck by linen, snow-white and of 
the finest quality. In contrast with his dress, 
a complexion fresh, pure, brilliant — the com- 
plexion of health and innocence; in contrast 
with this complexion from above a mass of 
coarse dark-red hair, cut short and loosely 
curling. Much physical beauty in the head, 
the shape being noble, the pose full of dignity 
and of strength ; almost no beauty in the face 
itself except in the gray eyes which were sin- 
cere, modest, grave. Yet a face not without 
moral loftiness and intellectual power; rugged 
as a rock, but as a rock is made less rugged by 
a little vine creeping over it, so his was softened 
by a fine network of nerves that wrought out 
upon it a look of kindness; betraying the first 
nature of passion, but disciplined to the higher 
nature of control; youthful, but wearing those 
unmistakable marks of maturity which mean a 
fierce early struggle against the rougher forces 
of the world. On the whole, with the calm, self- 
respecting air of one who, having thus far 
won in the battle of life, has a fiercer longing 


10 


The Choir Invisible 


for larger conflict, and whose entire character 
rests on the noiseless conviction that he is a 
man and a gentleman. 

Deeper insight would have been needed to 
discover how true and earnest a soul he was; 
how high a value he set on what the future 
had in store for him and on what his life 
would be worth to himself and to others ; 
and how, liking rather to help himself than 
to be helped, he liked less to be trifled with 
and least of all to be seriously thwarted. 

He was thinking, as his eyes rested on the 
watch, that if this were one of his ordinary 
days he would pursue his ordinary duties; he 
would go up street to the office of Marshall 
and for the next hour read as many pages 
of law as possible ; then get his supper at his 
favourite tavern — the Sign of the Spinning- 
Wheel — near the two locust trees ; then walk 
out into the country for an hour or more; 
then back to his- room and more law until 
midnight by the light of his tallow dip. 

But this was not an ordinary day — being 
one that he had long waited for and was des- 
tined never to forget. At dusk the evening 
before, the post-rider, so tired that he had 


The Choir Invisible 


II 


scarce strength of wind to blow his horn, had 
ridden into town bringing the mail from Phila- 
delphia ; and in this mail there was great news 
for him. It had kept him awake nearly all of 
the night before ; it had been uppermost in his 
mind the entire day in school. At the thought 
of it now he thrust his watch into his pocket, 
pulled his hat resolutely over his brow, and 
started toward Main Street, meaning to turn 
thence toward Cross Street, now known as 
Broadway. On the outskirts of the town in 
that direction lay the wilderness, undulating 
away for hundreds of miles like a vast green 
robe with scarce a rift of human making. 

He failed to urge his way through the throng 
as speedily as he may have expected, being 
withheld at moments by passing acquaintances, 
and at others pausing of his own choice to watch 
some spectacle of the street. 

The feeling lay fresh upon him this after- 
noon that not many years back the spot over 
which the town was spread had been but a 
hidden glade in the heart of the beautiful, 
awful wilderness, with a bountiful spring bub- 
bling up out of the turf, and a stream winding 
away through the green valley-bottom to the 


12 


The Choir Invisible 


bright, shady Elkhorn : a glade that for ages 
had been thronged by stately-headed elk and 
heavy-headed bison, and therefore sought also 
by unreckoned generations of soft-footed, hard- 
eyed red hunters. Then had come the begin- 
ning of the end when one summer day, toward 
sunset, a few tired, rugged backwoodsmen of the 
Anglo-Saxon race, wandering fearless and far 
into the wilderness from the eastern slopes of 
the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies, had made 
their camp by the margin of the spring; and 
always afterwards, whether by day or by night, 
they had dreamed of this as the land they must 
conquer for their homes. Now they had con- 
quered it already ; and now this was the town 
that had been built there, with its wide streets 
under big trees of the primeval woods ; with a 
long stretch of turf on one side of the stream 
for a town common ; with inns and taverns in 
the style of those of country England or of 
Virginia in the reign of George the Third ; 
with shops displaying the costliest merchandise 
of Philadelphia ; with rude dwellings of logs 
now giving way to others of frame and of brick ; 
and, stretching away from the town toward the 
encompassing wilderness, orderly gardens and 


The Choir Invisible 


13 


orchards now pink with the blossom of the 
peach, and fields of young maize and wheat 
and flax and hemp. 

As the mighty stream of migration of the 
Anglo-Saxon race had burst through the jagged 
channels of the Alleghanies and rushed onward 
to the unknown, illimitable West, it was this 
little town that had received one of the main 
streams, whence it flowed more gently dis- 
persed over the rich lands of the newly created 
State, or passed on to the Ohio and the south- 
ern fringes of the Lakes. It was this that 
received also a vast return current of the fear- 
ful, the disappointed, the weak, as they recoiled 
from the awful frontier of backwood life and 
resought the peaceful Atlantic seaboard — one 
of the defeated Anglo-Saxon armies of civiliza- 
tion. 

These two far-clashing tides of the aroused, 
migrating race — the one flowing westward, the 
other ebbing eastward — John Gray found him- 
self noting with deep interest as he moved 
through the town that afternoon a hundred 
years ago ; and not less keenly the unlike 
groups and characters thrown dramatically to- 
gether upon this crowded stage of border history. 


14 


The Choir Invisible 


At one point his attention was arrested by 
the tearful voices of women and the weeping of 
little children : a company of travellers with 
pack-horses — one of the caravans across the 
desert of the Western woods — was moving off 
to return by the Wilderness Road to the old 
abandoned homes in Virginia and North Caro- 
lina. Farther on, his passage was blocked by a 
joyous crowd that had gathered about another 
caravan newly arrived — not one traveller hav- 
ing perished on the way. Seated on the roots 
of an oak were a group of young backwoodsmen 
— swarthy, lean, tall, wild and reckless of bear- 
ing — their long rifles propped against the tree or 
held fondly across the knees ; the gray smoke of 
their pipes mingling with the gray of their jauntily 
worn raccoon-skin caps ; the rifts of yellow sun- 
light blending with the yellow of their hunting- 
shirts and tunics ; their knives and powder-horns 
fastened in the belts that girt in their gaunt 
waists : the heroic youthful sinew of the old 
border folk. One among them, larger and hand- 
somer than the others, had pleased his fancy 
by donning more nearly the Indian dress. His 
breech-clout was of dappled fawn-skin ; his long 
thigh boots of thin deer-hide were open at the 


The Choir Invisible 


15 


hips, leaving exposed the clear whiteness of his 
flesh ; below the knees they were ornamented by 
a scarlet fringe tipped with the hoofs of fawns 
and the spurs of the wild turkey; and in his 
cap he wore the intertwined wings of the hawk 
and the scarlet tanager. 

Under another tree in front of a tavern bear- 
ing the sign of the Virginia arms, a group of 
students of William and Mary, the new aris- 
tocrats of the West, were singing, gambling, 
drinking; while at intervals one of them, who 
had lying open before him a copy of Tom 
Paine’s “Age of Reason,” pounded on the 
table and apostrophied the liberties of Man. 
Once Gray paused beside a tall pole that had 
been planted at a street corner and surmounted 
with a liberty cap. Two young men, each wear- 
ing the tricolour cockade as he did, w^re stand- 
ing there engaged in secret conversation. As 
he joined them, three other young men — Feder- 
alists — sauntered past, wearing black cockades, 
with an eagle button on the left side. The six 
men saluted coolly. 

Many another group and solitary figure he saw 
to remind him of the turbulent history of the 
time and place. A parson, who had been the 


1 6 The Choir Invisible 

calmest of Indian fighters, had lost all self-corn 
trol as he contended out in the road with another 
parson for the use of Dr. Watts’ hymns instead 
of the Psalms of David. Near by, listening to 
them, and with a wondering eye on all he saw in 
the street, stood a French priest of Bordeaux, an 
exile from the fury of the avenging Jacobins. 
There were brown flatboatmen, in weather-beaten 
felt hats, just returned by the long overland trip 
from New Orleans and discussing with tobacco 
merchants the open navigation of the Missis- 
sippi ; and as they talked, up to them hurried the 
inventor Edward West, who said with excite- 
ment that if they would but step across the 
common to the town branch, he would demon- 
strate by his own model that some day navi- 
gation would be by steam : whereat they all 
laughed kindly at him for a dreamer, and went 
to laugh at the action of his mimic boat, moving 
hither and thither over the dammed water of 
the stream. Sitting on a stump apart from 
every one, his dog at his feet, his rifle across his 
lap, an aged backwoodsman surveyed in sorrow 
the civilization that had already destroyed his 
hunting and that was about sending him farther 
west to the depths of Missouri — along with 


The Choir Invisible 


17 

the buffalo. His glance fell with disgust upon 
two old gentlemen in knee-breeches who met 
and offered each other their snuff-boxes, with a 
deep bow. He looked much more kindly at a 
grave, proud Chickasaw hunter, who strode by 
with inward grief and shame, wounded by the 
robbery of his people. Puritans from New 
England ; cavaliers from Virginia ; Scotch-Irish 
from Pennsylvania ; mild-eyed trappers and 
bargemen from the French hamlets of Kas- 
kaskia and Cahokia ; wood-choppers ; scouts ; 
surveyors ; swaggering adventurers ; land-law- 
yers ; colonial burgesses, — all these mingled 
and jostled, plotted and bartered, in the shops, 
in the streets, under the trees. 

And everywhere soldiers and officers of the 
Revolution — come West with their families to 
search for homes, or to take possession of the 
grants made them by the Government. In 
the course of a short walk John Gray passed 
men who had been wounded in the battle of 
Point Pleasant ; men who had waded behind 
Clark through the freezing marshes of the Illinois 
to the storming of Vincennes; men who had 
charged through flame and smoke up the side 
of King’s Mountain against Ferguson’s Caro- 


1 8 The Choir Invisible 

lina loyalists ; men who with chilled ardour had 
let themselves be led into the massacre of the 
Wabash by blundering St. Clair ; men who with 
wild thrilling pulses had rushed to victory 
behind mad Antony Wayne. 

And the women ! Some — the terrible lioness- 
mothers of the Western jungles who had been 
used like men to fight with rifle, knife, and axe 

now sat silent in the doorways of their rough 
cabins, wrinkled, scarred, fierce, silent, scornful 
of all advancing luxury and refinement. Flitting 
gaily past them, on their way to the dry goods 
stores — supplied by trains of pack-horses from 
over the Alleghanies, or by pack-horse and boat 
down the Ohio — hurried the wives of the officers, 
daintily choosing satins and ribands for a coming 
ball. All this and more he noted as he passed 
lingeringly on. The deep vibrations of history 
swept through him, arousing him as the mar- 
shalling storm cloud, the rush of winds, and 
sunlight flickering into gloom kindle the sense 
of the high, the mighty, the sublime. 

As he was crossing the common, a number of 
young fellows stripped and girt for racing — for 
speed greater than an Indian’s saved many a life 
in those days, and running was part of the regu- 


The Choir Invisible 


19 


iar training of the young — bounded up to him 
like deer, giving a challenge : he too was very 
swift. But he named another day, impatient of 
the many interruptions that had already delayed 
him, and with long, rapid strides he had soon 
passed beyond the last fields and ranges of the 
town. Then he slackened his pace. Before 
him, a living wall, rose the edge of the wilder- 
ness. Noting the position of the sun and 
searching for a point of least resistance, he 
plunged in. 

Soon he had to make his way through a 
thicket of cane some twelve feet high ; then 
through a jungle of wild rye, buffalo grass and 
briars ; beyond which he struck a narrow deer- 
trace and followed that in its westward wind- 
ing through thinner undergrowth under the 
dark trees. 

He was unarmed. He did not even wear a 
knife. But the thought rose in his mind of how 
rapidly the forest also was changing its character. 
The Indians were gone. Two years had passed 
since they had for the last time flecked the 
tender green with tender blood. And the 
deadly wild creatures — the native people of 
earth and tree — they likewise had fled from 


20 


The Choir Invisible 


the slaughter and starvation of their kind. A 
little while back and a maddened buffalo or a 
wounded elk might have trodden him down 
and gored him to death in that thicket and no 
one have ever learned his fate — as happened 
to many a solitary hunter. He could not feel 
sure that hiding in the leaves of the branches 
against which his hat sometimes brushed there 
did not lie the panther, the hungrier for the 
fawns that had been driven from the near 
coverts. A swift lowering of its head, a tense 
noiseless spring, its fangs buried in his neck, — 
with no knife the contest would not have gone 
well with him. But of deadly big game he saw 
no sign that day. Once from a distant brake 
he was surprised to hear the gobble of the 
wild turkey; and more surprised still — and 
delighted — when the trail led to a twilight 
gloom and coolness, and at the green margin 
of a little spring he saw a stag drinking. It 
turned its terrified eyes upon him for an in- 
stant and then bounded away like a gray 
shadow. 

When he had gone about two miles, keeping 
his face steadily toward the sun, he came upon 
evidences of a clearing : burnt and fallen tim- 


The Choir Invisible 


21 


ber ; a field of sprouting maize ; another of 
young wheat; a peach orchard flushing all 
the green around with its clouds of pink ; be- 
yond this a garden of vegetables ; and yet far- 
ther on, a log house. 

He was hurrying on toward the house ; but as 
he passed the garden he saw standing in one 
corner, with a rake in her hand, a beautifully 
formed woman in homespun, and near by a 
negro lad dropping garden-seed. His eyes 
lighted up with pleasure ; and changing his 
course at once, he approached and leaned on 
the picket fence. 

How do you do, Mrs. Falconer ? ” 

She turned with a cry, dropping her rake 
and pushing her sun-bonnet back from her 
eyes. 

How unkind to frighten me ! ” she said, 
laughing as she recognized him ; and then 
she came over to the fence and gave him her 
hand — beautiful, but hardened by work. A 
faint colour had spread over her face. 

I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he replied, 
smiling at her fondly. '' But I had rapped on 
the fence twice. I suppose you took me for a 
flicker. Or you were too busy with your gar* 


22 


The Choir Invisible 


dening to hear me. Or, may be you were too 
deep in your own thoughts.” 

How do you happen to be out of school so 
early.?” she asked, avoiding the subject. 

“I was through with the lessons.” 

“You must have hurried.” 

“I did.” 

“And is that the way you treat people’s 
children .? ” 

“ That’s the way I treated them to-day.” 

“ And then you came straight out here .? ” 

“ As straight and fast as my legs could carry 
me — with a good many interruptions.” 

She searched his face eagerly for a moment 
Then her eyes fell and she turned back to the 
seed-planting. He stood leaning over the fence 
with his hat in his hand, glancing impatiently 
at the house. 

“ How can you respect yourself, to stand 
there idling and see me hard at work .? ” she 
said at length, without looking at him. 

“But you do the work so well — better than 
I could ! Besides, you are obeying a Divine 
law. I have no right to keep you from doing 
the will of God. I observe you as one of the 
daughters of Eve — under the curse of toil.” 


The Choir Invisible 


23 


** There’s no Divine command that I should 
plant beans. But it is my command that Amy 
shall. And this is Amy’s Avork. Aren’t you 
willing to work for she asked, slowly 

raising her eyes to his face. 

‘‘ I am willing to work for her, but I am not 
willing to do her work ! ” he replied. “ If the 
queen sits quietly in the parlour, eating bread 
and honey” — and he nodded, protesting, toward 
the house. 

“ The queen’s not in the parlour, eating bread 
and honey. She has gone to town to stay with 
Kitty Poythress till after the ball.” 

She noted how his expression instantly 
changed, and how, unconscious of his own 
action, he shifted his face back to the direction 
of the town. 

“Her uncle was to take her in to-morrow,” 
she went on, still watching him, “but no! she 
and Kitty mtist see each other to-night ; and 
her uncle must be sure to bring her party finery 
in the gig to-morrow. I’m sorry you had your 
walk for nothing ; but you’ll stay to supper } ” 

“Thank you; I must go back presently.” 

Didn’t you expect to stay when you came ? ” 

He flushed and laughed in confusion. 


24 


The Choir Invisible 


“If you’ll stay, I’ll make you a johnny-cake 
on a new ash shingle with my own hands.” 

“ Thank you, I really must go back. But if 
there’s a johnny-cake already made, I could 
easily take it along.” 

“My johnny-cakes do not bear transporta- 
tion.” 

“ I wouldn’t transport it far, you know.” 

“ Do stay ! Major Falconer will be so dis- 
appointed. He said at dinner there were so 
many things he wanted to talk to you about. 
He has been looking for you to come out. 
And, then, we have had no news for weeks. 
The major has been too busy to go to town; 
and I ! — I am as dry as one of the gourds of 
Confucius.” 

His thoughts settled contentedly upon her 
once more and his face cleared. 

“I can’t stay to supper, but I’ll keep the 
Indians away till the major comes,” he said. 
“What were you thinking of when I surprised 
you } ” 

“What was I thinking of.?” 

She stopped working while she repeated his 
words and folded her hands about the handle of 
the rake as if to rest awhile. A band of her 


The Choir Invisible 


25 


soft, shining hair, loosened by its own weight 
when she had bent over to thin some seed 
carelessly scattered in the furrow, now fell 
across her forehead. She pushed her bonnet 
back and stood gathering it a little absently 
into its place with the tips of her fingers. 
Meanwhile he could see that her eyes rested 
upon the edge of the wilderness. It seemed 
to him that she must be thinking of that ; and 
he noted with pain, as often before, the con- 
trast between her and her surroundings. From 
every direction the forest appeared to be rush- 
ing in upon that perilous little reef of a clearing 
— that unsheltered island of human life, newly 
displaying itself amid the ancient, blood-flecked, 
horror-haunted sea of woods. And shipwrecked 
on this island, tossed to it by one of the long 
tidal waves of history, there to remain in exile 
from the manners, the refinement, the ease, the 
society to which she had always been accus- 
tomed, this remarkable gentlewoman. 


Ill 


He had learned a great deal about her past, 
and held it mirrored in his memory. The gen- 
eral picture of it rose before his eyes now, as he 
leaned on the fence this pleasant afternoon in 
May and watched her restoring to its place, 
with delicate strokes of her finger-tips, the lock 
of her soft, shining hair. 

How could any one so fine have thriven amid 
conditions so exhausting ? Those hard toiling 
fingers, now grasping the heavy hoe, once used 
to tinkle over the spinet ; the small, sensitive 
feet, now covered with coarse shoe-packs tied 
with leather thongs, once shone in rainbow 
hues of satin slippers and silken hose. A sun- 
bonnet for the tiara of osprey plumes ; a dress 
spun and woven by her own hand out of her 
own fiax, instead of the stiff brocade ; log hut 
for manor-house ; one negro boy instead of 
troops of servants : to have possessed all that, 
to have been brought down to all this, and not 
to have been ruined by it, never to have lost 
26 


The Choir Invisible 


27 


distinction or been coarsened by coarseness, 
never to have parted with grace of manner or 
grace of spirit, or been bent or broken or over- 
clouded in character and ideals, — it was all this 
that made her in his eyes a great woman, a 
great lady. 

He held her in such reverence that, as he 
caught the serious look in her eyes at his im- 
pulsive question, he was sorry he had asked it : 
the last thing he could ever have thought of 
doing would have been to intrude upon the 
privacy of her reflections. 

“ What was I thinking of } ” 

There was a short silence and then she 
turned to him eagerly, brightly, with an entire 
change of voice and expression — 

“But the news from town — you haven’t told 
me the news.” 

“ Oh, there is any amount of news ! ” he 
cried, glad of a chance to retreat from his intru- 
sion. And he began lightly, recklessly : 

“ A bookbinder has opened a shop on Cross 
Street — a capital hand at the business, by the 
name of Leischman — and he will bind books 
at the regular market prices in exchange for 
linen rags, maple sugar, and goose-quills. I 


28 


The Choir Invisible 


advise you to keep an eye on your geese, if the 
major once takes a notion to have his old 
Shakespeare and his other volumes, that had 
their bindings knocked off in crossing the 
Alleghanies, elegantly rebound. You can tell 
him also that after a squirrel-hunt in Bourbon 
County the farmers counted scalps, and they 
numbered five thousand five hundred and 
eighty-nine ; so that he is not the only one 
who has trouble with his corn. And then you 
can tell him that on the common the other day 
Nelson Tapp and Willis Tandy had a fearful 
fight over a land-suit. Now it was Tandy and 
Tapp ; now it was Tapp and Tandy ; but they 
went off at last and drowned themselves and 
the memory of the suit in a bowl of sagamity.” 

“ And there is no news for me, I suppose } ” 

“ Oh yes ! I am happy to inform you that 
at Mclllvain’s you can now buy the finest 
Dutch and English letter-paper, gilt, embossed, 
or marbled.” 

“That is not very important; I have no 
correspondents.” 

“Well, a saddlery has been opened by two 
fellows from London, England, and you can now 
buy Amy a new side-saddle. She needs one.” 


The Choir Invisible 


29 


‘*Nor is that! The major buys the saddles 
for the family.” 

‘‘Well, then, as I came out on Main Street, 
I passed some ladies who accused me of being 
on my way here, and who impressed it upon 
me that I must tell you of the last displays 
of women-wear : painted and velvet ribbons, I 
think they said, and crepe scarfs, and chintzes 
and nankeens and moreens and sarcenets, and 
— oh yes! — some muslinette jackets tam- 
boured with gold and silver. They said we 
were becoming civilized — that the town would 
soon be as good as Williamsburg, or Annapolis, 
or Philadelphia for such things. You see I am 
like my children : I remember what I don’t 
understand.” 

“I understand what I must not remember! 
Don’t tell me of those things,” she added. 
“ They remind me of the past ; they make me 
think of Virginia. I wear homespun now, and 
am a Kentuckian.” 

“Well, then, the Indians fired on the Ohio 
packet-boat near Three Islands and killed — ” 

“ Oh ! ” she said, with pain and terror, “ don’t 
tell me of that, either ! It reminds me of the 
present.” 


30 


The Choir Invisible 


“Well, in Holland two thousand cats have 
been put into the corn-stores, to check the rav- 
ages of rats and mice,” he said, laughing. 

“What is the news from France.^ Do be 
serious ! ” 

“In New York some Frenchmen, seeing 
their flag insulted by Englishmen who took it 
down from the liberty-cap, went upstairs to the 
room of an English officer named Codd, seized 
his regimental coat and tore it to pieces.” 

“ Fm glad of it ! It was a very proper 
action ! ” 

“ But, madam, the man Codd was perfectly 
innocent ! ” 

“No matter ! His coat was guilty. They 
didn’t tear him to pieces ; they tore his coat. 
Are there any new books at the stores } ” 

“ A great many ! I have spent part of the 
last three days in looking over them. You 
can have new copies of your old favourites, 
Joseph Andrews, or Roderick Random, or 
Humphrey Clinker. You can have Goldsmith 
and Young, and Chesterfield and Addison. 
There is Don Quixote and Hudibras, Gulliver 
and Hume, Paley and Butler, Hervey and 
Watts, Lavater and Trenck, Seneca and Greg- 


The Choir Invisible 


31 


ory, Nepos and even Aspasia Vindicated — to 
say nothing of Abelard and Hdloi'se and 
Thomas a Kempis. All the Voltaires have 
been sold, however, and the Tom Paines went 
off at a rattling gait. By the way, while on 
the subject of books, tell the major that we 
have raised five hundred dollars toward buy- 
ing books for the Transylvania Library, and 
that as soon as my school is out I am to go 
East as a purchasing committee. What par- 
ticularly interests me is that I am going to 
Mount Vernon, to ask a subscription from 
President Washington. Think of that ! Think 
of my presenting myself there with my tri- 
coloured cockade — a Kentucky Jacobin!” 

“The President may be so occupied with the 
plots of you Kentucky Jacobins,” she said, 
“that he will not feel much like supplying you 
with more literature.” Then she added, looking 
at him anxiously, “ And so you are going away } ” 

“Pm going, and Pm glad Pm going. I have 
never set eyes on a great man. It makes my 
heart beat to think of it. I feel as a young 
Gaul might who was going to Rome to ask 
Caesar for gold with which to overthrow him. 
Seriously, it would be a dreadful thing for the 


32 


The Choir Invisible 


country if a treaty should be ratified with Eng- 
land. There is not a democratic society from 
Boston to Charleston that will not feel enraged 
with the President. You may be sure that 
every patriot in Kentucky will be outraged, 
and that the Governor will denounce it to the 
House.” 

‘‘There is news from France, then — serious 
news } ” 

“Much, much! The National Convention 
has agreed to carry into full effect the treaty 
of commerce between the two Republics, and 
the French and American flags have been 
united and suspended in the hall. The Dutch 
have declared the sovereignty of the French, 
and French and Dutch patriots have taken 
St. Martin’s. The English have declared war 
against the Dutch and granted letters of marque 
and reprisals. There has been a complete 
change in the Spanish Ministry. There has 
been a treaty made between France and the 
Grand Duke of Tuscany. The French fleet 
is in the West Indies and has taken possession 
of Guadeloupe. All French emigrants in Swit- 
zerland have been ordered to remove ten leagues 
from the borders of France. A hundred and 


The Choir Invisible 


33 


fifty thousand Austrians are hurrying down 
toward the Rhine, to be reinforced by fifty 
thousand more.” 

He had run over these items with the rapid- 
ity of one who has his eye on the map of the 
world, noting the slightest change in the situa- 
tion of affairs that could affect Kentucky ; and 
she listened eagerly like one no less interested. 

‘‘But the treaty! The treaty I The open 
navigation of the Mississippi ! ” she cried im- 
patiently. 

“The last news is that the treaty will cer- 
tainly be concluded and the open navigation of 
the Mississippi assured to us forever. The 
major will load his flatboats, drift down to New 
Orleans, sell those Spanish fops his tobacco for 
its weight in gems, buy a mustang to ride home 
on, and if not robbed and murdered by the land- 
pirates on the way, come back to you like an 
enormous bumblebee from a clover-field, his 
thighs literally packed with gold.” 

“ I am so glad, so glad, so glad ! ” 

He drew from his pockets a roll. 

“ Here are papers for two months back. And 
now Tve something else to tell you. That is 
one of the things I came for.” 


34 


The Choir Invisible 


As he said this, his manner, hitherto full of 
humour and vivacity, turned grave, and his voice, 
sinking to a lower tone, became charged with 
sweetness. It was the voice in which one re- 
fined and sincere soul confides to another refined 
and sincere soul the secret of some new happi- 
ness that has come to it. 

But noticing the negro lad, who had paused 
in his work several paces off and stood watching 
them, he said to her : 

May I have a drink .? ” 

She turned to the negro : 

'‘Go to the spring-house and bring some 
water.” 

The lad moved away, smiling to himself and 
shaking his head. 

“ He has broken all my pitchers,” she added. 
“To-day I had to send my last roll of linen to 
town by Amy to buy more queen’s-ware. The 
moss will grow on the bucket before he gets 
back.” 

When the boy was out of hearing, she turned 
again to him : 

“What is it .? Tell me quickly.” 

“I have had news from Philadelphia. The 
case is at last decided in favour of the heirs, and 


The Choir Invisible 


35 


I come at once into possession of my share. It 
may be eight or ten thousand dollars.” His 
voice trembled a little despite himself. 

She took ' his hands in hers with a warm, 
close pressure, and tears of joy sprang to her 
eyes. 

The whole of his bare, bleak life was known 
to her; its half-starved beginning; its early 
merciless buffeting; the upheaval of vast cir- 
cumstance in the revolutionary history of the 
times by which he had again and again been 
thrown back upon his own undefended strength ; 
and stealthily following him from place to place, 
always closing around him, always seeking to 
strangle him, or to poison him in some vital 
spot, that most silent, subtle serpent of life — 
Poverty. Knowing this, and knowing also the 
man he had become, she would in secret some- 
times liken him to one of those rare unions of 
delicacy and hardihood which in the world of 
wild flowers Nature refuses to bring forth except 
from the cranny of a cold rock. Its home is the 
battle-field of black roaring tempests ; the red 
lightnings play among its roots ; all night seam- 
less snow-drifts are woven around its heart ; no 
bee ever rises to it from the valley below where 


36 


The Choir Invisible 


the green spring is kneeling ; no morning bird 
ever soars past it with observant song ; but in 
due time, with unswerving obedience to a law 
of beauty unfolding from within, it sets forth 
its perfect leaves and strains its steadfast face 
toward the sun. 

These paltry thousands ! She realized that 
they would lift from him the burden of debts 
that he had assumed, and give him, without 
further waiting, the liberty of his powers and 
the opportunities of the world. 

“ God bless you ! ” she said with trembling 
lips. “It makes me happier than it does you. 
No one else in the whole world is as glad as 1 
am. 

Silence fell upon them. Both were thinking, 
but in very different ways — of the changes 
that would now take place in his life. 

“Do you know,” he said at length, looking 
into her face with the quietest smile, “that if 
this lawsuit had gone against me it would have 
been the first great defeat of my life ? Sorely 
as I have struggled, I have yet to encounter 
that common myth of weak men, an insurmount- 
able barrier. The imperfection of our lives — 
what is it but the imperfection of our planning 


The Choir hivisible 


37 


and doing ? Shattered ideals — what hand shat- 
ters them but one’s own? I declare to you 
at this moment, standing here in the clear light 
of my own past, that I firmly believe I shall 
be what I will, that I shall have what I want, 
and that I shall now go on rearing the struct- 
ure of my life, to the last detail, just as I have 
long planned it.” 

She did not answer, but stood looking at him 
with a new pity in her eyes. After all, was he 
so young, so untaught by the world? Had a 
little prosperity already puffed him up? 

‘‘There will be this difference, of course,” he 
added. “ Hitherto I have had to build slowly ; 
henceforth there will be no delay, now that I 
am free to lay hold upon the material. But, 
my dear friend, I cannot bear to think of my 
life as a structure to be successfully reared 
without settling at once how it is to be lighted 
from within. And, therefore, I have come to 
speak to you about — the lamp.” 

As he said this a solemn beauty flashed out 
upon his face. As though the outer curtain of 
his nature had been drawn up, she now gazed 
into the depths and confidences. 

Her head dropped quickly on her bosom ; 


38 


The Choir Invisible 


and she drew slightly back, as though to escape 
pain or danger. 

“You must know how long I have loved 
Amy,” he continued in a tone of calmness. “ I 
have not spoken sooner, because the circum- 
stances of my life made it necessary for me to 
wait ; and now I wish to ask her to become my 
wife, and I am here to beg your consent first.” 

For some time she did not answer. The slip 
of an elm grew beside the picket fence, and she 
stood passing her fingers over the topmost 
leaves, with her head lowered so that he could 
not see her face. At length she said in a voice 
he could hardly hear : 

“I have feared for a long time that this 
would come ; but I have never been able to get 
ready for it, and I am not ready now.” 

Neither spoke for some time longer ; only 
his expression changed, and he looked over at 
her with a compassionate, amused gravity, as 
though he meant to be very patient with her 
opposition. On her part, she was thinking — 
Is it possible that the first use he will make of 
his new liberty is to forge the chain of a new 
slavery } Is this some weak spot now to be 
fully revealed in his character.? Is this the 


The Choir Invisible 


39 


drain in the bottom of the lake that will in 
the end bring its high, clear level down to 
mud and stagnant shallows and a swarm of 
stinging insects ? At last she spoke, but with 
difficulty : 

“ I have known for a year that you were 
interested in Amy. You could not have been 
here so much without our seeing that. But 
let me ask you one question : Have you ever 
thought that I wished you to marry her.?” 

^*1 have always beheld in you an unmasked 
enemy,” he replied, smiling. 

^‘Then I can go on,” she said. ‘‘But I feel 
as though never in my life have I done a thing 
that is as near being familiar and unwomanly. 
Nevertheless, for your sake — for hers — for ours 
— it is my plain, hard duty to ask you whether 
you are sure — even if you should have her con- 
sent — that my niece is the woman you ought to 
marry.” And she lifted to him her clear, calm 
eyes, prematurely old in the experience of life. 

“ I am sure,” he answered with the readiness 
of one who has foreseen the question. 

The negro boy approached with a bucket of 
cold crystal water, and he drank a big gourd full 
of it gratefully. 


40 


The Choir Invisible 


“You can go and kindle the fire in the 
kitchen,” she said to the negro. “ It is nearly 
time to be getting supper. I will be in by 
and by.” 

“You have been with her so much!” she 
continued to Gray after another interval of em- 
barrassment. “And you know, or you ought to 
know, her disposition, her tastes, her ways and 
views of life. Is she the companion you need 
now will always need } ” 

“ I have been much with her,” he replied, tak- 
ing up her words with humorous gravity. “ But 
I have never studied her as I have studied law. 
I have never cross-examined her for a witness, or 
prosecuted her as an attorney, or pronounced sen- 
tence on her as a judge. I am her advocate — 
and I am ready to defend her now — even to you 1 ” 

“John! — ” 

“I love her — that is all there is of it!” 

“Suppose you wait a little longer.” 

“I have waited too long already from neces- 
sity.” It was on his lips to add : “ I have 
gone too far with her; it is too late to retreat ; ” 
but he checked himself. 

“ If I should feel, then, that I must withhold 
my consent ? ” 


The Choir Invisible 


41 


He grew serious, and after the silence of a 
few moments, he said with great respect : 

‘‘I should be sorry; but — ” and then he 
forbore. 

“ If Major Falconer should withhold his } ” 

He shook his head, and set his lips, turning 
his face away through courtesy. 

It would make no difference ! Nothing 
would make any difference ! ” and then another 
silence followed. 

“ I suppose all this would be considered the 
proof that you loved her,” she began at length, 
despairingly, “but even love is not enough to 
begin with ; much less is it enough to live by.” 

“You don’t appreciate her! You don’t do 
her justice I ” he cried rudely. “ But perhaps 
no woman can ever understand why a man loves 
any other woman 1 ” 

“ I am not thinking of why you love my 
niece,” she replied, with a curl of pride in her 
nostril and a flash of anger in her eyes. “I 
am thinking of why you will cease to love her, 
and why you will both be unhappy if you 
marry her. It is not my duty to analyze your 
affections ; it is my duty to take care of her 
welfare.” 


42 


The Choir Invisible 


“My dear friend/’ he cried, his face aglow 
with impatient enthusiasm — “my dear friend/’ 
and he suddenly lifted her hand to his lips, “ I 
have but one anxiety in this whole matter : 
will you cease to be my friend if I act in op- 
position to your wishes ? ” 

“Should I cease to be your friend because 
you had made a mistake ? It is not to me you 
are unkind,” she answered, quickly withdraw- 
ing her hand. Spots of the palest rose ap- 
peared on her cheeks, and she bent over and 
picked up the rake, and began to work. 

“I must be going,” he said awkwardly; “it 
is getting late.” 

“Yes,” she said; “it is getting late.” 

Still he lingered, swinging his hat in his hand, 
ill at ease, with his face set hard away. 

“ Is that all you have to say to me ? ” he 
asked at length, wheeling and looking her 
steadily and fondly in the eyes. 

“That is all,” she replied, controlling the 
quiver in her voice; but then letting herself 
go a little, she added with slow distinctness : 

“You might remember this: some women 
in marrying demand all and give all : with good 
men they are the happy; with base men they 


The Choir Invisible 


43 


are the broken-hearted. Some deman4 every- 
thing and give little : with weak men they are 
tyrants ; with strong men they are the divorced. 
Some demand little and give all : with con- 
genial souls they are already in heaven; with 
uncongenial they are soon in their graves. 
Some give little and demand little : they are 
the heartless, and they bring neither the joy 
of life nor the peace of death.” 

“And which of these is Amy he said, afte: 
a minute of reflection. “ And which of the mei 
am I.?” 

“ Don’t ask her to marry you until you find 
out both,” she answered. 

She watched him as he strode away from her 
across the clearing, with a look in her eyes 
that she knew nothing of — watched him, 
motionless, until his tall, black figure passed 
from sight behind the green sunlit wall 
of the wilderness. What undisciplined, un- 
awakened strength there was in him ! how far 
such a stride as that would carry him on in 
life ! It was like the tread of one of his own 
forefathers in Cromwell’s unconquerable, hymn- 
singing armies. She loved to think of him as 
holding his descent from a line so pious and so 


44 


The Choir Invisible 


grim : it served to account to her for the quality 
of stern, spiritual soldiership that still seemed 
to be the mastering trait of his nature. How 
long would it remain so, was the question that 
she had often asked of herself. A fighter in 
the world he would always be — she felt sure of 
that ; nor was it necessary to look into his past 
to obtain this assurance; one had but to look 
into his eyes. Moreover, she had little doubt 
that with a temper so steadily bent on conflict, 
he would never suffer defeat where his own 
utmost strength was all that was needed to 
conquer. But as he grew older, and the world 
in part conquered him as it conquers so many 
of us, would he go into his later battles as he 
had entered his earlier ones — to the measure 
of a sacred chant } Beneath the sweat and 
wounds of all his victories would he carry the 
white lustre of conscience, burning untarnished 
in him to the end .? 

It was this religious purity of his nature and 
his life, resting upon him as a mantle visible to 
all eyes but invisible to him, that had, as she 
believed, attracted her to him so powerfully. 
On that uncouth border of Western civilization, 
to which they had both been cast, he was a little 


The Choir Invisible 


45 


lonely in his way, she in hers ; and this fact had 
drawn them somewhat together. He was a 
scholar, she a reader ; that too had formed a 
bond. He had been much at their home as 
lover of her niece, and this intimacy had given 
her a good chance to take his wearing measure 
as a man. But over and above all other things, 
it was the effect of the unfallen in him, of the 
highest keeping itself above assault, of his first 
youth never yet brushed away as a bloom, that 
constituted to her his distinction among the 
men that she had known. It served to place 
him in contrast with the colonial Virginia 
society of her remembrance — a society in 
which even the minds of the clergy were not 
like a lawn scentless with the dew on it, but like 
a lawn parched by the afternoon sun and full 
of hot odours. It kept him aloof from the 
loose ways of the young backwoodsmen and 
aristocrats of the town, with whom otherwise 
he closely mingled. It gave her the right, she 
thought, to indulge a friendship for him such 
as she had never felt for any other man ; and 
in this friendship it made it easier for her to 
overlook a great deal that was rude in him, 
headstrong, overbearing. 


46 


The Choir Invisible 


When, this afternoon, he had asked her what 
she was thinking of when he surprised her with 
his visit, she had not replied : she could not 
have avowed even to herself that she was think- 
ing of such things as these : that having, 
for some years, drawn out a hard, dull life in 
that settlement of pathfinders, trappers, wood- 
choppers, hunters, Indian fighters, surveyors ; 
having afterwards, with little interest, watched 
them, one by one, as the earliest types of 
civilization followed, — the merchant, the law- 
yer, the priest, the preacher of the Gospel, the 
soldiers and officers of the Revolution, — at last, 
through all the wilderness, as it now fondly 
seemed to her, she saw shining the white light 
of his long absent figure, bringing a new melody 
to the woods, a new meaning to her life, and 
putting an end to all her desire ever to return 
to the old society beyond the mountains. 

His figure passed out of sight, and she turned 
and walked sorrowfully to the cabin, from the 
low rugged chimney of which a pale blue smoke 
now rose into the twilight air. She chid her- 
self that she had confronted the declaration 
of his purpose to marry her niece with so 
little spirit, such faulty tact. She had long 


The Choir Invisible 


47 


known that he would ask this ; she had long 
gotten ready what she would say; but in the 
struggle between their wills, she had been un- 
accountably embarrassed, she had blundered, 
and he had left rather strengthened than weak- 
ened in his determination. 

But she must prevent the marriage ; her 
mind was more resolute than ever as to that. 

Slowly she reached the doorstep of the cabin, 
a roughly hewn log, and turning, stood there 
with her bonnet in her hand, her white figure 
outlined before the doorway, slender and still. 

The sun had set. Night was rushing on over 
the awful land. The wolf-dog, in his kennel 
behind the house, rose, shook himself at his 
chain, and uttered a long howl that reached 
away to the dark woods — the darker for the 
vast pulsing yellow light that waved behind 
them in the west like a gorgeous soft aerial 
fan. As the echoes died out from the peach 
orchard came the song of a robin, calling for 
love and rest. 

Then from another direction across the clear- 
ing another sound reached her : the careless 
whistle of the major, returning from his day’s 
work in the field. When she heard that, her 


48 


The Choir Invisible 


face took on the expression that a woman some- 
times comes to wear when she has accepted what 
life has brought her although it has brought 
her nothing for which she cares ; and her lips 
opened with an unconscious sigh of weariness 
— the weariness that has been gathering weari- 
ness for years and that runs on in weariness 
through the future. 

Later, she was kneeling before the red logs 
of the fireplace with one hand shielding her 
delicate face from the blistering heat ; in the 
other holding the shingle on which richly made 
and carefully shaped was the bread of Indian 
maize that he liked. She did not rise until she 
had placed it where it would be perfectly 
browned ; otherwise he would have been dis- 
appointed and the evening would have been 
spoiled. 


IV 


John Gray did not return to town by his 
straight course through the forest, but followed 
the winding wagon-road at a slow, meditative 
gait. He was always thoughtful after he had 
been with Mrs. Falconer ; he was unusually 
thoughtful now ; and the gathering hush of 
night, the holy expectancy of stars, a flock of 
white clouds lying at rest low on the green 
sky like sheep in some far uplifted meadow, 
the freshness of the woods soon to be hung 
with dew, — all these melted into his mood 
as notes from many instruments blend in the 
ear. 

But he was soon aroused in an unexpected 
way. When he reached the place where the 
wagon-road passed out into the broader public 
road leading from Lexington to Frankfort, he 
came near stumbling over a large, loose bundle, 
tied in a blue and white neckerchief. 

Plainly it had been lost and plainly it was 
his duty to discover if possible to whom it 


49 


50 


The Choir Invisible 


belonged. He carried it to one side of the 
road and began to examine its contents : a wide, 
white lace tucker, two fine cambric handker- 
chiefs, two pairs of India cotton hose, two pairs 
of silk hose, two thin muslin handkerchiefs, a 
pair of long kid gloves, — straw colour, — a pair 
of white kid shoes, a pale-blue silk coat, a thin, 
white striped muslin dress. 

The articles were not marked. Whose could 
they be ^ Not Amy’s : Mrs. Falconer had 
expressly said that the major was to bring her 
finery to town in the gig the next day. They 
might have been dropped by some girl or by 
some family servant, riding into town ; he knew 
several young ladies, to any one of whom they 
might belong. He would inquire in the morn- 
ing ; and meantime, he would leave the bundle at 
the office of the printer, where lost articles were 
commonly kept until' they could be advertised 
in the paper, and called for by their owners. 

He replaced the things, and carefully retied 
the ends of the kerchief. It was dark when 
he reached town, and he went straight to 
his room and locked the bundle in his closet. 
Then he hurried to his tavern, where his supper 
had to be especially cooked for him, it being 


The Choir Invisible 


51 


past the early hour of the pioneer evening meal. 
While he sat out under the tree at the door, 
waiting and impatiently thinking that he would 
go to see Amy as soon as he could despatch it, 
the tavern-keeper came out to say that some 
members of the Democratic Society had been 
looking for him. Later on, these returned. A 
meeting of the Society .had been called for that 
night, to consider news brought by the post- 
rider the day previous and to prepare advices 
for the Philadelphia Society against the post- 
rider’s return : as secretary, he was wanted at 
the proceedings. He begged hard to be ex- 
cused, but he was the scholar, the scribe ; 
no one would take his place. 

When the meeting ended, the hour was past 
for seeing Amy. He went to his room and read 
law with flickering concentration of mind till 
near midnight. Then he snuffed out his candle, 
undressed, and stretched himself along the edge 
of his bed. 

It was hard and coarse. The room itself 
was the single one that formed the ruder sort 
of pioneer cabin. The floor was the earth 
itself, covered here and there with the skins 
of wild animals; the walls but logs, poorly 


52 


The Choir Invisible 


plastered. From a row of pegs driven into one 
of these hung his clothes — not many. The 
antlers of a stag over the doorway held his 
rifle, his hunting-belt, and his hat. A swing- 
ing shelf displayed a few books, being eagerly 
added to as he could bitterly afford it — with 
a copy of Paley, lent by the Reverend James 
Moore, the dreamy, .saintlike, flute-playing 
Episcopal parson of the town. In the middle 
of the room a round table of his own vigorous 
carpentry stood on a panther skin ; and on this 
lay some copy books in which he had just set 
new copies for his children ; a handful of goose- 
quills to be fashioned into pens for them ; the 
proceedings of the Democratic Society, freshly 
added to this evening ; copies of the Kentucky 
Gazette containing essays by the political leaders 
of the day on the separation of Kentucky from 
the Union and the opening of the Mississippi 
to its growing commerce — among them some of 
his own, stately and academic, signed “ Cato the 
Younger.” Lying open on the table lay his 
Bible; after law, he always read a little in that; 
and to-night he had reread one of his favourite 
chapters of St. Paul : that wherein the great, 
calm, victorious soldier of the spirit surveys the 


The Choir Invisible 


53 


history of his trials, imprisonments, beatings. 
In one corner was set a three-cornered cup- 
board containing his underwear, his new cos- 
sack boots, and a few precious things that had 
been his mother’s : her teacup and saucer, her 
prayer-book. It was in this closet that he had 
put the lost bundle. 

He had hardly stretched himself along the 
edge of his bed before he began to think of 
this. 

Every complete man embraces some of the 
qualities of a woman, for Nature does not mean 
that sex shall be more than a partial separation 
of one common humanity ; otherwise we should 
be too much divided to be companionable. 
And it is these womanly qualities that not 
only endow a man with his insight into the 
other sex, but that enable him to bestow a 
certain feminine supervision upon his own 
affairs when no actual female has them in 
charge. If he marries, this inner helpmeet 
behaves in unlike ways toward the newly reign- 
ing usurper; sometimes giving up peaceably, 
at others remaining her life-long critic — reluc- 
tant but irremovable. If many a wife did but 
realize that she is perpetually observed not only 


54 


The Choir Invisible 


by the eyes of a pardoning husband but by the 
eyes of another woman hidden away in the 
depths of his being, she would do many things 
differently and not do some things at all. 

The invisible slip of a woman in Gray now 
began to question him regarding the bundle. 
Would not those delicate, beautiful things be 
ruined, thus put away in his closet } He got 
up, took the bundle out, laid it on his table, 
untied the kerchief, lifted carefully off the 
white muslin dress and the blue silk coat, and 
started with them toward two empty pegs on 
the wall. He never closed the door of his 
cabin if the night was fine. It stood open 
now and a light wind blew the soft fabrics 
against his body and limbs, so that they seemed 
to fold themselves about him, to cling to him. 
He disengaged them reluctantly — apologeti- 
cally. 

Then he lay down again. But now the dress 
on the wall fascinated him. The moonlight 
bathed it, the wind swayed it. This was the 
first time that a woman’s garments had ever 
hung in his room. He welcomed the mere 
accident of their presence as though it pos- 
sessed a forerunning intelligence, as though it 


The Choir Invisible 


55 


were the annunciation of his approaching 
change of life. And so laughing to him- 
self, and under the spell of a growing fancy, 
he got up again and took the little white 
shoes and set them on the table in the moon- 
light — on the open Bible and the speech of 
St. Paul — and then went back, and lay looking 
at them and dreaming — looking at them and 
dreaming. 

His thoughts passed meantime like a shining 
flock of white doves to Amy, hovering about 
her. They stole onward to the time when 
she would be his wife; when lying thus, he 
would wake in the night and see her dress on 
the wall and feel her head on his bosom ; when 
her little shoes might stand on his open Bible, 
if they chose, and the satin instep of her bare 
foot be folded in the hard hollow of his. 

He uttered a deep, voiceless, impassioned 
outcry that she might not die young nor he 
die young; that the struggles and hardships 
of life, now seeming to be ended, might never 
begirt him or her so closely again ; that they 
might grow peacefully old together. 

To-morrow then, he would see her ; no, not 
to-morrow; it was long past midnight now. 


56 


The Choir Invisible 


He got down on his bare knees beside the 
bed with his face buried in his hands and said 
his prayers. 

And then lying outstretched with his head 
resting on his folded hands, the moonlight 
streaming through the window and lighting up 
his dark-red curls and falling on his face and 
neck and chest, the cool south wind blowing 
down his warm limbs, his eyes opening and 
closing in religious purity on the dress, and 
his mind opening and closing on the visions 
of his future, he fell asleep. 


V 


When he awoke late, he stretched his big 
arms drowsily out before his face with a gesture 
like that of a swimmer parting the water : he 
was in truth making his way out of a fathom- 
less, moonlit sea of dreams to the shores of 
reality. Broad daylight startled him with its 
sheer blinding revelation of the material world, 
as the foot of a swimmer, long used to the 
yielding pavements of the ocean, touches with 
surprise the first rock and sand. 

He sprang up, bathed, dressed, and stepped 
out into the crystalline freshness of the morn- 
ing. He was glowing with his exercise, at 
peace with himself and with all men, and so 
strong in the exuberance of his manhood that 
he felt he could have leaped over into the east, 
shouldered the sun, and run gaily, impatiently, 
with it up the sky. How could he wait to see 
Amy until it went up its long slow way and 
then down again to its setting.? A powerful 


57 


58 


The Choir Invisible 


young lion may some time have appeared thus 
at daybreak on the edge of a jungle and meas- 
ured the stretches of sand to be crossed before 
he could reach an oasis where memory told him 
was the lurking-place of love. 

It was still early. The first smoke curled 
upward from the chimneys of the town ; the 
melodious tinkle of bells reached his ear as the 
cows passed from the milking to the outlying 
ranges deep in their wild verdure. Even as he 
stood surveying the scene, along the path which 
ran close to his cabin came a bare-headed, nut 
brown pioneer girl, whose close-fitting dress of 
white homespun revealed the rounded outlines 
of her figure. She had gathered up the skirt 
which was short, to keep it from the tops of the 
wet weeds. Her bare, beautiful feet were pink 
with the cold dew. Forgotten, her slow fat 
cows had passed on far ahead ; for at her side, 
wooing her with drooping lashes while the earth 
was still flushed with the morn, strolled a young 
Indian fighter, swarthy, lean tall, wild. His 
long thigh boots of thin deer-hide, open at the 
hips, were ornamented with a scarlet fringe 
and rattled musically with the hoofs of fawns 
and the spurs of the wild turkey ; his gray rac* 


The Choir Invisible 


59 

coon-skin cap was adorned with the wings of 
the hawk and the scarlet tanager. 

The magnificent young warrior lifted his cap 
to the schoolmaster with a quiet laugh ; and the 
girl smiled at him and shook a warning finger 
to remind him he was not to betray them. He 
smiled back with a deprecating gesture to sig- 
nify that he could be trusted. He would have 
liked it better if he could have said more plainly 
that he too had the same occupation now ; and 
as he gazed after them, lingering along the path 
side by side, the long-stifled cravings of his heart 
rose to his unworldly, passionate eyes : he all but 
wished that Amy also milked the cows at early 
morning and drove them out to pasture. 

When he went to his breakfast at the tavern, 
one of the young Williamsburg aristocrats was 
already there, pretending to eat ; and hovering 
about the table, brisk to appease his demands, 
the daughter of the taverner : she as ruddy as a 
hollyhock and gaily flaunting her head from 
side to side with the pleasure of denying him 
everything but his food, yet meaning to kiss 
him when twilight came — Dnce, and then to 
run. 

Truly, it seemed that this day was to be 


6o 


The Choir Invisible 


given up to much pairing : as he thought it 
rightly should be and that without delay. 
When he took his seat in the school-room and 
looked out upon the children, they had never 
seemed so small, so pitiful. It struck him 
that Nature is cruel not to fit us for love and 
marriage as soon as we are born — cruel to 
make us wait twenty or thirty years before she 
lets us really begin to live. He looked with 
eyes more full of pity than usual at blear-eyed, 
delicate little Jennie, as to whom he could never 
tell whether it was the multiplication-table that 
made her deathly sick, or sickness that kept 
her from multiplying. His eye lit upon a wee, 
chubby-cheeked urchin on the end of a high, 
hard bench, and he fell to counting how many 
ages must pass before that unsuspicious grub 
would grow his palpitating wings of flame. He 
felt like making them a little speech and telling 
them how happy he was, and how happy they 
would all be when they got old enough to 
deserve it. 

And as for the lessons that day, what differ- 
ence could it make whether ideas sprouted or 
did not sprout in those useless brains } He 
answered all the hard questions himself ; and. 


The Choir Invisible 


6i 


indeed, so sunny and exhilarating was the 
weather of his discipline that little Jennie, see- 
ing how the rays fell and the wind lay, gave up 
the multiplication-table altogether and fell to 
drawing tomahawks. 

A remarkable mixture of human life there was 
in Gray’s school. There were the native little 
Kentuckians, born in the wilderness — the first 
wild, hardy generation of the new people ; and 
there were little folks from Virginia, from Ten- 
nessee, from North Carolina, and from Pennsyl- 
vania and other sources, huddled together, some 
uncouth, some gentle-born, and all starting out 
to be formed into the men and women of 
Kentucky. 

They had their strange, sad, heroic games 
and pastimes under his guidance. Two little 
girls would be driving the cows home about 
dusk ; three little boys would play Indian and 
capture them and carry them off ; the husbands 
of the little girls would form a party to the 
rescue ; the prisoners would drop pieces of 
their dresses along the way; and then at a 
certain point of the woods — it being the dead 
of night now and the little girls being bound 


62 


The Choir Invisible 


to a tree, and the Indians having fallen asleep 
beside their smouldering campfires — the res- 
cuers would rush in and there would be whoops 
and shrieks and the taking of scalps and a 
happy return. Or some settlers would be shut 
up in their fort. The only water to be had 
was from a spring outside the walls, and 
around this the enemy skulked in the corn 
and grass. But their husbands and sweet- 
hearts must not perish of thirst. So, with a 
prayer, a tear, a final embrace, the little women 
marched out through the gates to the spring 
in the very teeth of death and brought back 
water in their wooden dinner-buckets. 

Or, when the boys would become men with 
contests of running and pitching quoits and 
wrestling, the girls would play wives and have 
a quilting in a house of green alder-bushes, or 
be capped and wrinkled grandmothers sitting 
beside imaginary spinning-wheels and smoking 
imaginary pipes. 

Sometimes it was not Indian warfare but 
civil strife. One morning as many as three 
Daniel Boones appeared on the playground at 
the same moment ; and at once there was a 
dreadful fight to ascertain which was the genu- 


The Choir Invisible 


63 


ine Daniel. This being decided, the spurious 
Daniels submitted to be : the one, Simon 
Kenton ; the other, General George Rogers 
Clark. 

And there was another game of history — 
more practical in its bearings — which he had 
not taught them, but which they had taught 
him ; they had played it with him that very 
morning. 

When he had stepped across the open to the 
school, he found that the older boys, having 
formed themselves into a garrison for the defence 
of the smaller boys and girls, had barricaded the 
door and barred and manned the wooden win- 
dows : the school-house had suddenly become 
a frontier station ; they were the pioneers ; he 
was the invading Indians — let him attack them 
if he dared ! He did dare and that at once ; 
for he knew that otherwise there would be 
no school that day or as long as the white 
race on the inside remained unconquered. So 
had ensued a rough-and-tumble scrimmage for 
fifteen minutes, during which the babies within 
wailed aloud with real terror of the battle, and 
he received some real knocks and whacks and 
punches through the loop-holes of the stockade : 


64 


The Choir Invisible 


the end being arrived at when the school>house 
door, by a terrible wrench from the outside, was 
torn entirely off its wooden hinges ; and the 
victory being attributed — as an Indian victory 
always was in those days — to the overwhelming 
numbers of the enemy. 

With such an opening of the day, the aca- 
demic influence over childhood may soon be re- 
stored to forcible supremacy but will awaken 
little zest. Gray was glad therefore on all ac- 
counts that this happened to be the day on 
which he had promised to tell them of the 
battle of the Blue Licks. Thirteen years be- 
fore and forty miles away that most dread- 
ful of all massacres had taken place ; and in 
the town were many mothers who still wept 
for their sons, many widows who still dreamed 
of their young husbands, fallen that beautiful, 
fatal August day beneath the oaks and the 
cedars, or floating down the red-dyed river. 
All the morning he could see the expectation 
of this story in their faces : a pair of distant, 
clearest eyes would be furtively lifted to his, 
then quickly dropped ; or another pair more 
steadily directed at him through the backwoods 
loop-hole of two stockade fingers. 


The Choir Invisible 


65 


At noon, then, having dismissed the smaller 
ones for their big recess, he was standing amid 
the eager upturned faces of the others — bare- 
headed under the brilliant sky of May. He 
had chosen the bank of the Town Fork, where 
it crossed the common, as a place in which 
he should be freest from interruption and best 
able to make his description of the battle-field 
well understood. This stream flows unseen 
beneath the streets of the city now with scarce 
current enough to wash out its grimy channel ; 
but then it flashed broad and clear through the 
long valley of scattered cabins and orchards 
and cornfields and patches of cane. 

It was a hazardous experiment with the rough 
jewels of those little minds. They were still 
rather like diamonds rolling about on the bot- 
tom of barbarian rivers than steadily set and 
mounted for the uses of civilization. 

He fixed his eyes upon a lad in his fifteenth 
year, the commandant of the fort of the morn- 
ing, who now stood at the water edge, watch- 
ing him with breathless attention. A brave, 
sunny face; — a big shaggy head holding a mind 
in it as clear as a sphere of rock-crystal ; already 
heated with vast ambition — a leader in the 


66 


The Choir Invisible 


school, afterwards to be a leader in the nation 
— Richard Johnson. 

Listen ! ” he cried ; and when he spoke i^ 
that tone he reduced everything turbulent to 
peace. I have brought you here to tell you 
of the battle of the Blue Licks not because it 
was the last time, as you know, that an Indian 
army ever invaded Kentucky ; not because a 
hundred years from now or a thousand years 
from now other school-boys and other teachers 
will be talking of it still ; not because the Ken- 
tuckians will some day assemble on the field and 
set up a monument to their forefathers, your 
fathers and brothers ; but because there is a les- 
son in it for you to learn now while you are 
children. A few years more and some of you 
boys will be old enough to fight for Kentucky 
or for your country. Some of you will be com- 
mon soldiers who will have to obey the orders 
of your generals ; some of you may be generals 
with soldiers under you at the mercy of your 
commands. It may be worth your own lives, 
it may save the lives of your soldiers, to heed 
this lesson now and to remember it then. And 
all of you — whether you go into battles of that 
sort or not — will have others ; for the world 


The Choir Invisible 


67 


has many kinds of fighting to be done in it 
and each of you will have to do his share. 
And whatever that share may be, you will 
need the same character, the same virtues, to 
encounter it victorious ; for all battles are won 
in the same way, all conquerors are alike. This 
lesson, then, will help each of you to win, none 
of you to lose. 

“Do you know what it was that brought 
about the awful massacre of the Blue Licks } 
It was the folly of one officer. 

“ Let the creek here be the Licking River. 
The Kentuckians, some on foot and some on 
horse, but all tired and disordered and hurrying 
along, had just reached the bank. Over on the 
other side — some distance back — the Indians 
were hiding in the woods and waiting. No one 
knew exactly where they were ; every one knew 
they counted from seven hundred to a thousand. 
The Kentuckians were a hundred and eighty- 
two. There was Boone with the famous Boons- 
borough men, the very name of whom was a 
terror; there was Trigg with men just as good 
from Harrodsburg ; there was Todd, as good as 
either, with the men from Lexington. More 
than a fourth of the whole were commissioned 


68 


The Choir Invisible 


officers, and more fearless men never faced an 
enemy. There was but one among them whose 
courage had ever been doubted, and do you 
know what that man did ? 

'' After the Kentuckians had crossed the river 
to attack, been overpowered, forced back to the 
river again, and were being shot down or cut 
down in the water like helpless cattle, that 
man — his name was Benjamin Netherland — 
did this : He was finely mounted. He had 
quickly recrossed the river and had before 
him the open buffalo trace leading back home. 
About twenty other men had crossed as quickly 
as he and were urging their horses toward 
this road. But Netherland, having reached 
the opposite bank, wheeled his horse’s head 
toward the front of the battle, shouted and 
rallied the others, and sitting there in full 
view and easy reach of the Indian army across 
the narrow river, poured his volley into the fore- 
most of the pursuers, who were cutting down 
the Kentuckians in the river. He covered 
their retreat He saved their lives. 

There was another soldier among them 
named Aaron Reynolds. He had had a quar- 
rel some days before with Colonel Patterson 


The Choir Invisible O9 

and there was bad blood between them. Dur- 
ing the retreat, he was galloping toward the 
ford. The Indians were close behind. But as 
he ran, he came upon Colonel Patterson, who 
had been wounded and, now exhausted, had 
fallen behind his comrades. Reynolds sprang 
from his horse, helped the officer to mount, saw 
him escape, and took his poor chance on foot. 
For this he fell into the hands of the Indians. 

‘‘That is the kind of men of whom that little 
army of a hundred and eighty-two was made up 

— the oak forest of Kentucky. 

“And yet, when they had reached the river 
in this pursuit and some twenty of the officers 
had come out before the ranks to hold a council 
of war and the wisest and the oldest were 
urging caution or delay, one of them — McGary 

— suddenly waved his hat in the air, spurred 
his horse into the river, and shouted : 

“ ‘ Let all who are not cowards follow me ! ^ 

“They all followed; and then followed also 
the shame of defeat, the awful massacre, the 
sorrow that lasts among us still, and the loss 
to Kentucky of many a gallant young life that 
had helped to shape her destiny in the nation. 

“ Some day perhaps some historian will write 


70 


The Choir Invisible 


it down that the Kentuckians followed McGary 
because no man among them could endure 
such a taunt. Do not believe him. No man 
among them even thought of the taunt : it 
had no meaning. They followed him because 
they were too loyal to desert him and those 
who went with him in his folly. Your fathers 
always stood together and fought together as 
one man, or Kentucky would never have been 
conquered ; and in no battle of all the many 
that they ever fought did they ever leave a 
comrade to perish because he had made a 
mistake or was in the wrong. 

“This, then, is your lesson from the battle 
of Blue Licks : Never go into a battle merely to 
show that you are not a coward : that of itself 
shows what a coward you are. 

“ Do not misunderstand me ! whether you be 
men or women, you will never do anything in 
the world without courage. It is the greatest 
quality of the mind — next to honor. It is your 
king. But the king must always have a good 
cause. Many a good king has perished in a bad 
one ; and this noblest virtue of courage has per- 
haps ruined more of us than any other that we 
possess. You know what character the old 


The Choir Invisible 


71 


kings used always to have at their courts. I 
have told you a great deal about him. It was 
the Fool. Do you know what personage it is that 
Courage, the King, is so apt to have in the Court 
of the Mind ? It is the Fool also. Lay these 
words away ; you will understand them better 
when you are older and you will need to un- 
derstand them very well. Then also you will 
know what I mean when I say to you this morn- 
ing that the battle of the Blue Licks was the 
work of the Fool, jesting with the King.” 

He had gone to the field himself one Sat- 
urday not long before, walking thoughtfully 
over it. He had had with him two of the 
Lexington militia who, in the battle, had been 
near poor Todd, their colonel, while fighting 
like a lion to the last and bleeding from many 
wounds. The recollection of it all was very 
clear now, very poignant : the bright wind- 
ing river, there broadening at its ford ; the 
wild and lonely aspect of the country round 
about. On the farther bank the long lofty 
ridge of rock, trodden and licked bare of vege- 
tation for ages by the countless passing buffalo ; 
blackened by rain and sun ; only the more deso- 
late for a few dwarfish cedars and other timber 


72 


The Choir Invisible 


scant and dreary to the eye. Encircling this 
hill in somewhat the shape of a horseshoe, a 
deep ravine heavily wooded and rank with grass 
and underbrush. The Kentuckians, disorderly 
foot and horse, rushing in foolhardiness to the 
top of this uncovered expanse of rock ; the 
Indians, twice, thrice, their number, engirdling 
its base, ringing them round with hidden death. 
The whole tragedy repossessed his imagination 
and his emotions. His face had grown pale, 
his voice took the measure and cadence of an 
old-time minstrel’s chant, his nervous fingers 
should have been able to reach out and strike 
the chords of a harp. 

With uplifted finger he was going on to im- 
press them with another lesson : that in the 
battles which would be sure to await them, 
they must be warned by this error of their 
fathers never to be over-hasty or over-confi- 
dent, never to go forward without knowing the 
nature of the ground they were to tread, or 
throw themselves into a struggle without meas- 
uring the force of the enemy. He was doing 
this when a child came skipping joyously across 
the common, and pushing her way up to him 
through the circle of his listeners, handed him 


The Choir Invisible 


73 


a note. He read it, and in an instant the great 
battle, hills, river, horse, rider, shrieks, groans, 
all vanished from his mind as silently as a 
puff of white smoke from a distant cannon. 

For a while he stood with his eyes fixed 
upon the paper, so absorbed as not to note the 
surprise that had fallen upon the children. 
At length merely saying “ I shall have to tell 
you the rest some other day,” he walked rapidly 
across the common in the direction from which 
the little messenger had come. 

A few minutes later he stood at the door of 
Father Poythress, the Methodist minister, ask- 
ing for Amy. But she and Kitty had ridden 
away and would not return till night. Leaving 
word that he would come to see her in the even- 
ing, he turned away. 

The children were scattered : there could be 
no more of the battle that day. But it was half 
an hour yet before his duties would recommence 
at the school. As he walked slowly along de- 
bating with himself how he should employ the 
time, a thought struck him ; he hastened to the 
office of one of many agents for the locating 
and selling of Kentucky lands, and spent the 
interval in determining the titles to several 


74 


The Choir Invisible 


tracts near town — an intricate matter in those 
times. But he found one farm, the part of 
an older military grant of the French and 
Indian wars, to which the title was unmistak- 
ably direct. 

As soon as his school was out, he went to 
look at this property again, now that he was 
thinking of buying it. He knew it very well 
already, his walks having often brought him 
into its deep majestic woods ; and he penetrated 
at once to an open knoll sloping toward the 
west and threw himself down on the deep green 
turf with the freedom of ownership. 


VI 


Yes, this property would suit him ; it would 
suit Amy. It was near town ; it was not far 
from Major Falconer’s. He could build his 
house on the hill-top where he was lying. At 
the foot of it, out of its limestone caverns, 
swelled a bountiful spring. As he listened he 
could hear the water of the branch that ran 
winding away from it toward the Elkhorn. 
That would be a pleasant sound when he sat 
with her in their doorway of summer evenings. 
On that southern slope he would plant his 
peach orchard, and he would have a vineyard. 
On this side Amy could have her garden, 
have her flowers. Sloping down from the front 
of the house to the branch would be their lawn, 
after he had cleared away everything but a few 
of the noblest old trees : under one of them, 
covered with a vine that fell in long green 
cascades from its summit to the ground, he 
would arrange a wild-grape swing for her, to 
?5 


76 


The Choir Invisible 


make good the loss of the one she now had at 
Major Falconer’s. 

Thus, out of' one detail after another, he com 
structed the whole vision of the future, with the 
swiftness of desire, the unerring thoughtfulness 
of love ; and, having transformed the wilderness 
into his home, he feasted on his banquet of 
ideas, his rich red wine of hopes and plans. 

One of the subtlest, most saddening effects 
of the entire absence of possessions is the 
inevitable shrinkage of nature that must be 
undergone by those who have nothing to own. 
When a man, by some misfortune, has sud- 
denly suffered the loss of his hands, much 
of the bewilderment and consternation that 
quickly follow have their origin in the thought 
that he never again shall be able to grasp. To 
his astonishment, he finds that no small part 
of his range of mental activity and sense of 
power was involved in that exercise alone. He 
has not lost merely his hands ; much of his 
inner being has been stricken into disuse. 

But the hand itself is only the rudest type 
of the universal necessity that pervades us to 
take hold. The body is furnished with two ; 
the mind, the heart, the spirit — who shall 


The Choir Invisible 


77 


number the invisible, the countless hands of 
these? All growth, all strength, all uplift, all 
power to rise in the world and to remain 
arisen, comes from the myriad hold we have 
taken upon higher surrounding realities. 

Some time, wandering in a thinned wood, 
you may have happened upon an old vine, 
the seed of which had long ago been dropped 
and had sprouted in an open spot where there 
was no timber. Every May, in response to 
Nature’s joyful bidding that it yet shall rise, 
the vine has loosed the thousand tendrils of 
its hope, those long, green, delicate fingers 
searching the empty air. Every December 
you may see these turned stiff and brown, 
and wound about themselves like spirals or 
knotted like the claw of a frozen bird. Year 
after year the vine has grown only at the 
head, remaining empty-handed ; and the head 
itself, not being lifted always higher by any- 
thing the hands have seized, has but moved 
hither and thither, back and forth, like the head 
of a wounded snake in a path. Thus every sum- 
mer you may see the vine, fallen back and 
coiled upon itself, and piled up before you like 
a low green mound, its own tomb ; in winter a 


The Choir Invisible 


78 

black heap, its own ruins. So, it often is with 
the poorest, who live on at the head, remaining 
empty-handed; fallen in and coiled back upon 
themselves, their own inescapable tombs, their 
own unavertible ruins. 

The prospect of having what to him was 
wealth had instantly bestowed upon John Gray 
the liberation of his strength. It had untied 
the hands of his idle powers ; and the first 
thing he had reached fiercely out to grasp was 
Amy — his share in the possession of women ; 
the second thing was land — his share in the 
possession of the earth. With these at the 
start, the one unshakable under his foot, the 
other inseparable from his side, he had no 
doubt that he should rise in the world and lay 
hold by steady degrees upon all that he should 
care to have. Naturally now these two blent 
far on and inseparably in the thoughts of one 
whose temperament doomed him always to be 
planning and striving for the future. 

The last rays of the sun touched the summit 
of the knoll where he was lying. Its setting 
was with great majesty and repose, depth after 
depth of cloud opening inward as toward the 
presence of the infinite peace. The boughs of 


The Choir Invisible 


79 


the trees overhead were in blossom ; there were 
blue and white wild-flowers at his feet. As he 
looked about him, he said to himself in his 
solemn way that the long hard winter of his 
youth had ended; the springtime of his man- 
hood was turning green like the woods. 

With this night came his betrothal. For 
years he had looked forward to that as the 
highest white mountain peak of his life. As 
he drew near it now, his thoughts made a path- 
way for his feet, covering it as with a fresh fall 
of snow. Complete tenderness overcame him 
as he beheld Amy in this new sacred relation ; 
a look of religious reverence for her filled his 
eyes. He asked himself what he had ever done 
to deserve all this. 

Perhaps it is the instinctive trait of most of 
us to seek an explanation for any great happi- 
ness as we are always prone to discuss the 
causes of our adversity. Accordingly, and in 
accord with our differing points of view of the 
universe, we declare of our joy that it is the 
gift of God to us despite our shortcomings and 
our transgressions ; or that it is our blind share 
of things tossed out impersonally to us by the 
blind operation of the chances of life; or that 


8o 


The Choir Invisible 


it is the clearest strictest logic of our own 
being and doing — the natural vintage of our 
own grapes. 

Of all these, the one that most deeply 
touches the heart is the faith, that a God above 
who alone knows and judges aright, still loves 
and has sent a blessing. To such a believer 
the heavens seem to have opened above his 
head, the Divine to have descended and re- 
turned ; and left alone in the possession of his 
joy, he lifts his softened eyes to the Light, the 
Life, the Love, that has always guided him, 
always filled him, never forgotten him. 

This stark audacity of faith was the school- 
master’s. It belonged to him through the Cove- 
nanter blood of his English forefathers and 
through his Scotch mother; but it had sur- 
rounded him also in the burning spiritual hero- 
ism of the time, when men wandered through 
the Western wilderness, girt as with camel’s hair 
and fed as on locusts, but carrying from cabin to 
cabin, from post to post, through darkness and 
snow and storm the lonely banner of the Christ 
and preaching the gospel of everlasting peace to 
those who had never known any peace on earth. 
So that all his thoughts were linked with the 


The Choir Invisible 


8i 


eternal ; he had threaded the labyrinth of life, 
evermore awestruck with its immensities and its 
mysteries ; in his ear, he could plainly hear im- 
mortality sounding like a muffled bell across a 
sea, now near, now farther away, according 
as he was in danger or in safety. Therefore, 
his sudden prosperity — Amy — marriage — 
happiness — all these meant to him that 
Providence was blessing him. 

In the depth of the wood it had grown dark. 
With all his thoughts of her sounding like the 
low notes of a cathedral organ, he rose and 
walked slowly back to town. He did not care 
for his supper ; he did not wish to speak with 
any other person ; the rude, coarse banter of 
the taverns and the streets would in some way 
throw a stain on her. Luckily he reached 
his room unaccosted ; and then with care but 
without vanity having dressed himself in his 
best, he took his way to the house of Father 
Poythress 


6 


VII 


He was kept waiting for some time. More 
than once he heard in the next room the 
sounds of smothered laughter and two voices, 
pitched in a confidential tone : the one with 
persistent appeal, the other with persistent 
refusal. At last there reached him the laugh- 
ter of a merry agreement, and Amy entered 
the room, holding Kitty Poythress by the hand. 

She had been looking all day for her lost 
bundle. Now she was tired; worried over the 
loss of her things which had been bought by 
her aunt at great cost and self-sacrifice ; and 
disappointed that she should not be able to 
go to the ball on Thursday evening. It was 
to be the most brilliant assemblage of the 
aristocratic families of the town that had ever 
been known in the wilderness and the first 
endeavour to transplant beyond the mountains 
the old social elegance of Williamsburg, An- 
napolis, and Richmond. Not to be seen in 
the dress that Mrs. Falconer, dreaming of her 
82 


The Choir Invisible 


83 


own past, had deftly made — not to have her 
beauty reign absolute in that scene of lights 
and dance and music — it was the long, slow 
crucifixion of all the impulses of her gaiety 
and youth. 

She did not wish to see any one to-night, 
least of all John Gray with whom she had had 
an engagement to go. No doubt he had come 
to ask why she had broken it in the note 
which she had sent him that morning. She 
had not given him any reason in the note; she 
did not intend to give him the reason now. 
He would merely look at her in his grave, re- 
proachful, exasperating way and ask what was 
the difference : could she not wear some other 
dress } or what great difference did it make 
whether she went at all ? He was always ready 
to take this manner of patient forbearance 
toward her, as though she were one of his 
school children. To-night she was in no mood 
to have her troubles treated as trifles or herself 
soothed like an infant that was crying to be 
rocked. 

She walked slowly into the room, dragging 
Kitty behind her. She let him press the tips 
of her unbending fingers, pouted, smiled faintly, 


84 


The Choir Invisible 


dropped upon a divan by Kitty’s side, strength* 
ened her hold on Kitty’s hand, and fixed her 
eyes on Kitty’s hair. 

‘^Aren’t you tired she said, giving it an 
absorbed caressing stroke, with a low laugh, 
‘a am.” 

I am going to look again to-morrow, Kitty,” 
she continued, brightening up with a decisive 
air, “and the next day and the next.” She 
kept her face turned aside from John and did 
not include him in the conversation. Women 
who imagine themselves far finer ladies than 
this child was treat a man in this way — rarely 
— very rarely — say, once in the same man’s 
lifetime. 

“ We are both so tired,” she drowsily remarked 
at length, turning to John after some further 
parley which he did not understand and tap- 
ping her mouth prettily with the palm of her 
hand to fight away a yawn. “ You know we’ve 
been riding all day. And William Penn is at 
death’s door with hunger. Poor William Penn ! 
I’m afraid he’ll suffer to-night at the tavern 
stable. They never take care of him and feed 
him as I do at home. He is so unhappy when 
he is hungry ; and when he is unhappy, I am. 


The Choir Invisible 85 

And he has to be rubbed down so beautifully, 
or he doesn’t shine.” 

The tallow candles, which had been lighted 
when he came, needed snuffing by this time. 
The light was so dim that she could not see 
his face — blanched with bewilderment and 
pain and anger. What she did see as she 
looked across the room at him was his large 
black figure in an absent-minded awkward 
posture and his big head held very straight 
and high as though it were momentarily get- 
ting higher. He had remained simply silent. 
His silence irritated her; and she knew she 
was treating him badly and that irritated her 
with him all the more. She sent one of 
her light arrows at him barbed with further 
mischief. 

I wish, as you go back, you would stop at 
the stable and see whether they have mistreated 
him in any way. He takes things so hard when 
they don’t go to suit him,” and she turned to 
Kitty and laughed significantly. 

Then she heard him clear his throat, and in 
a voice shaking with passion, he said : 

** Give your orders to a servant.” 

A moment of awkward silence followed. She 


86 


The Choir Invisible 


did not recognize that voice as his or such 
rude, unreasonable words. 

‘*I suppose you want to know why I broke 
my engagement with you,” she said, turning 
toward him aggrievedly and as though the sub- 
ject could no longer be waived. “But I don’t 
think you ought to ask for the reason. You 
ought to accept it without knowing it.” 

“I do accept it. I had never meant to ask.” 

He spoke as though the whole affair were 
not worth recalling. She could not agree with 
him in this, and furthermore his manner admin- 
istered a rebuke. 

“ Oh, don’t be too indifferent,” she said sar- 
castically, looking to Kitty for approval. “If 
you cared to go to the party with me, you are 
supposed to be disappointed.” 

“ I am disappointed,” he replied briefly, but 
still with the tone of wishing to be done with 
the subject. Amy rose and snuffed the candles. 

“And you really don’t care to know why I 
broke my engagement } ” she persisted, return- 
ing to her seat and seeing that she worried 
him. 

“ Not unless you should wish to tell me.” 

“But you should wish to know, whether I 


The Choir Invisible 87 

tell you or not. Suppose it were not a good 
reason ? ” 

“ I hadn’t supposed you’d give me a poor 
one.” 

''At least, it’s serious, Kitty.” 

" I had never doubted it.” 

"It might be amusing to you.” 

" It could hardly be both.” 

"Yes; it is both. It is serious and it is 
amusing.” 

He made no reply but by an impatient gesture. 

"And you really don’t wish to know.!*” 

He sat silent and still. 

" Then, I’ll tell you : I lost the only reason I 
had for going,” and she and Kitty exchanged a 
good deal of laughter of an innocent kind. 

The mood and the motive with which he had 
sought her made him feel that he was being 
unendurably trifled with and he rose. But at 
the same moment Kitty effected an escape and 
he and Amy were left alone. 

She looked quickly at the door through which 
Kitty had vanished, dropped her arms at her 
sides and uttered a little sigh of inexpressible 
relief. 

" Sit down,” she said, repeating her grimac^fe 


88 


The Choir Invisible 


at absent Kitty. You are not going ! I want 
to talk to you. Isn’t Kitty dreadful ” 

Her voice and manner had changed. There 
was no one now before whom she could act — 
no one to whom she could show that she could 
slight him, play with him. Furthermore, she 
had gotten some relief from the tension of her 
ill humour by what she had already said ; and 
now she really wanted to see him. The ill 
humour had not been very deep; nothing in 
her was very deep. And she was perfectly sin- 
cere again — for the moment. What does one 
expect ? 

“ Don’t look so solemn,” she said with mock 
ruefulness. ‘‘You make me feel as though 
you had come to baptize me, as though you 
had to wash away my sins. Come here!” and 
she laid her hand invitingly on the chair that 
Kitty had vacated at her side. 

He stood bolt upright in the middle of the 
room, looking down at her in silence. Then 
he walked slowly over and took the seat. She 
folded her hands over the back of her own 
chair, laid her cheek softly down on them and 
looked up with a smile — subdued, submissive, 
fond, absolutely his. 


The Choir Invisible 


Don’t be cross ! ” she pleaded, with a low 
laugh full of maddening music to him. 

He could not speak to her or look at her foi 
anger and shame and disappointment; so she 
withdrew one hand from under her cheek and 
folded it softly over the back of his — his was 
pressed hard down on the cap of his knee — 
and took hold of his big fingers one by one, 
caressing them. 

Don ’t be cross ! ” she pleaded. “ Be good to 
me ! I’m tired and unhappy ! ” 

Still he would not speak, or look at her ; so 
she put her hand back under her cheek again, 
and with a patient little sigh closed her eyes as 
though she had done all she could. The next 
moment she leaned over and let her forehead 
rest on the back of his hand. 

“ You are so cross ! ” she said. I don’t like 
you ! ” 

‘^Amy!” he cried, turning fiercely on her 
and catching her hand cruelly in his, ^‘before I 
say anything else to you, you’ve got to promise 
me — ” And then he broke down and then 
went on again foolishly — “ you’ve got to 
promise me one thing now. You sha’n’t treat 
me in one way when we are by ourselves and 


90 


The Choir Invisible 


in another way when other people are present. 
If you love me, as you always make me believe 
you do when we are alone, you must make the 
whole world believe, it !” 

What right would I have to make the whole 
world believe I loved you?” she asked, looking 
at him quizzically. 

“ ril give you the right ! ” 

The rattle of china at the cupboard in the 
next room was heard. Amy started up and 
skipped across the room to the candle on the 
mantelpiece. 

“ If Kitty does come back in here — ” she 
said, in a disappointed undertone ; and with the 
snuffers between her thumb and forefinger, she 
snipped them bitingly several times at the door. 

The door was opened slightly, a plate was 
thrust through, and a laughing voice called 
apologetically : 

“Amy!” 

“ Come in here I Come in 1 ” commanded 
Amy, delightedly; and as Kitty reluctantly 
entered, she fixed upon her a telling look. 
“ Upon my word,” she said, “ what do you 
mean by treating me this way?” and catching 
Kitty’s eye, she made a grimace at John. 


The Choir Invisible 91 

Kitty offered the candy to John with the 
assurance that it was made out of that year’s 
maple sugar in their own camp. 

“ He never eats sweet things and he doesn’t 
care for trifles : bring it here ! ” And the girls 
seated themselves busily side by side on the 
opposite side of the room. Amy bent over 
the plate and chose the largest, beautiful white 
plait. 

*‘Now there’ll be a long silence,” she said, 
holding it up between her dainty fingers and 
settling herself back in her chair. But, Kitty, 
yon talk. And if you do leave your company 
again! — ” She threatened Kitty charm:ngly. 

He was in his room again, thinking it all 
over. She had not known why he had come : 
how could she know } To her it meant simply 
an ordinary call at an unfortunate hour; for 
she was tired — he could see that — and wor- 
ried — he could see that also. And he I — 
had he ever been so solemn, so implacably in 
earnest, so impatient of the playfulness which 
at another time he would have found merely 
amusing > Why was he all at once growing so 
petty with her and exacting } Little by little he 


92 


The Choir Invisible 


went over the circumstances judicially, in an 
effort to restore her to lovable supremacy over 
his imagination. 

His imagination — for his heart was not in it. 
He wrought out her entire acquittal, but it did 
no good. Who at any time sounds the depths 
of the mind which, unlike the sea, can regain 
calm on the surface and remain troubled by a 
tempest at the bottom } What is the name of 
that imperial faculty dwelling within it which 
can annul the decisions of the other associated 
powers After he had taken the entire blame 
upon himself, his rage and disappointment were 
greater than ever. 

Was it nothing for her to break her engage- 
ment with him and then to follow it up with 
treatment like that.? Was it nothing to force 
Kitty into the parlour despite the silent under- 
standing reached by all three long ago that 
whenever he called at the Poythress home, he 
would see her alone.? Was it nothing to take 
advantage of his faithfulness to her, and treat 
him as though he had no spirit .? Was it noth- 
ing to be shallow and silly herself .? 

Was it nothing — and ah! here was the 
trouble at the bottom of it all 1 Here was the 


The Choir Invisible 


93 


strain of conviction pressing sorely, steadily in 
upon him through the tumult of his thoughts — 
was it nothing for her to be insincere? Did 
she even know what sincerity was ? Would he 
marry an insincere woman ? Insincerity was 
a growth not only ineradicable, but sure to 
spread over the nature as one grew older. He 
knew young people over whose minds it had 
begun to creep like the mere slip of a plant up 
a wall ; old ones over whose minds it lay like 
a poisonous creeper hiding a rotting ruin. To 
be married and sit helplessly by and see this 
growth slowly sprouting outward from within, 
enveloping the woman he loved, concealing her, 
dragging her down — an unarrestable disease 
— was that to be his fate ? 

Was it already taking palpable possession of 
Amy ? Could he hide his eyes any longer to 
the fact that he had felt its presence in her 
all the time — in its barely discoverable stages? 
What else could explain her conduct in allowing 
him, whenever they were alone, to think that 
she was fond of him, and then scattering this 
belief to the winds whenever others were pres- 
ent ? Was this what Mrs. Falconer had meant ? 
He could never feel any doubt of Mrs. Falconer. 


94 


The Choir Invisible 


Merely to think of her now had the effect of 
instantly clearing the whole atmosphere for his 
baffled, bewildered mind. 

So the day ended. He had been beaten, 
routed, and by forces how insignificant ! Bit- 
terly he recalled his lesson to the children 
that morning. What a McGary he had been 
— reckless, overconfident, knowing neither the 
plan nor the resources of the enemy ! He 
recalled his boast to Mrs. Falconer the day 
before, that he had never been defeated and 
that now he would proceed to carry out the 
plans of his life without interruption. 

But to-morrow evening Amy would not be 
going to the ball. She would be alone. Then 
he would not go. He must find out all that 
he wished to know — or all that he did not. 


VIII 


The evening of the ball had come at last. 

Not far from John’s school on the square 
stood another log cabin, from which another 
and much more splendid light streamed out 
across the wilderness : this being the printing- 
room and book-bindery of the great Mr. John 
Bradford. His portrait, scrutinized now from 
the distance and at the disadvantage of a hun- 
dred years, hands him down to posterity as a 
bald-headed man with a seedy growth of hair 
sprouting laterally from his temples, so that his 
ears look like little flat-boats half hidden in 
little canebrakes ; with mutton-chop whiskers 
growing far up on the overhanging ledges of 
his cheek-bones and suggesting rather a daring 
variety of lichen ; with a long arched nose, run- 
ning on its own hook in a southwesterly direc- 
tion ; one eye a little higher than the other ; a 
protruding upper lip, as though he had behind 
it a set of the false teeth of the time, which 
were fixed into the jaws by springs and hinges, 


95 


96 


The Choir Invisible 


all but compelling a man to keep his mouth 
shut by main force ; and a very short neck with 
an overflowing jowl which weighed too heavily 
on his high shirt collar. 

Despite his maligning portrait a foremost per- 
sonage of his day, of indispensable substance, of 
invaluable port : Revolutionary soldier, Indian 
warrior ; editor and proprietor of the Kentucky 
Gazette, the first newspaper in the wilderness ; 
binder of its first books — some of his volumes 
still surviving on musty, forgotten shelves ; sen- 
atorial elector ; almanac-maker, taking his ideas 
from the greater Mr. Franklin of Philadelphia, 
as Mr. Franklin may have derived his from the 
still greater Mr. Jonathan Swift of London; 
appointed as chairman of the board of trustees 
to meet the first governor of the State when he 
had ridden into the town three years before, 
and in behalf of the people of the new com- 
monwealth which had been carried at last tri- 
umphantly into the Union, to bid his excellency 
welcome in an address conceived in the most 
sonorous English of the period ; and afterwards 
for many years author of the now famous 

Notes,” which will perhaps make his name 
immortal among American historians. 


The Choir Invisible 


97 


On this evening of the ball at the home of 
General James Wilkinson, the great Mr. Brad- 
ford was out of town, and that most unluckily ; 
for the occasion — in addition to all the pleasure 
that it would furnish to the ladies — was de- 
signed as a means of calling together the leaders 
of the movement to separate Kentucky from the 
Union ; and the idea may have been, that the 
great Mr. Bradford, having written one fine 
speech to celebrate her entrance, could as easily 
turn out a finer one to celebrate her withdrawal. 

It must not be inferred that his absence had 
any political significance. He had merely gone 
a few days previous to the little settlement at 
Georgetown — named for the great George — 
to lay in a supply of paper for his Weekly, and 
had been detained there by heavy local rains, 
not risking so dry an article of merchandise 
either by pack-horse or open wagon under the 
dripping trees. Paper was very scarce in the 
wilderness and no man could afford to let a 
single piece get wet. 

In setting out on his journey, he had in- 
structed his sole assistant — a young man by the 
name of Charles O’Bannon — as to his duties in 
the meantime : he was to cut some new capital 

H 


98 


The Choir Invisible 


letters out of a block of dog-wood in the office, 
and also some small letters where the type fell 
short ; to collect if possible some unpaid sub- 
scriptions — this being one of the advantages 
that an editor always takes of his own absence 
— in particular to call upon certain merchants 
for arrears in advertisements ; and he was to 
receive any lost articles that might be sent in 
to be advertised, or return such as should be 
called for by their owners : with other details 
appertaining to the establishment. 

O’Bannon had performed his duties as he had 
been told — reserving for himself, as always, the 
right of a personal construction. He had ad- 
dressed a written appeal to the non-paying sub- 
scribers, declaring that the Gazette had now 
become a Try-Weekly, since Mr. Bradford had 
to try hard every week to get it out by the 
end; he had collected from several delinquent 
advertisers ; whittled out three new capital 
letters, and also the face of Mr. Bradford and 
one of his legs ; taken charge with especial 
interest of the department of Lost and Found ; 
and was now ready for other duties. 

On this evening of the ball he was sitting in 
the office. 


The Choir Invisible 


99 


In one corner of the room stood a worn hand- 
press with two dog-skin inking-balls. Between 
the logs of the wall near another corner a hori- 
zontal iron bar had been driven, and from the 
end of this bar hung a saucer-shaped iron lamp 
filled with bear-oil. Out of this oil stuck the 
end of a cotton rag for a wick ; which, being 
set on fire, filled the room with a strong smell 
and a feeble, murky, flickering light. Under the 
lamp stood a plain oak slab on two pairs of cross- 
legs ; and on the slab were papers and letters, 
a black ink-horn, some leaves of native tobacco, 
and a large gray-horn drinking-cup — empty. 
Under the table was a lately emptied bottle. 

O’Bannon sat in a rough chair before this 
drinking-cup, smoking a long tomahawk-pipe. 
His head was tilted backward, his eyes followed 
the flight of smoke upward. 

That he expected to be at the party might 
have been inferred from his dress : a blue 
broadcloth coat with yellow gilt buttons; a 
swan’s-down waistcoat with broad stripes of red 
and white ; a pair of dove-coloured corded-velvet 
pantaloons with three large yellow buttons on 
the hips; and a neckcloth of fine white cam- 
bric. 


lOO 


The Choir Invisible 


His figure was thickset, strong, cumbrous; 
his hair black, curly, shining. His eyes, bold, 
vivacious, and now inflamed, were of that 
rarely beautiful blue which is seen only in 
members of the Irish race. His complexion 
was a blending of the lily and the rose. His 
lips were thick and red under his short fuzzy 
moustache. His hands also were thick and 
soft, always warm, and not very clean — on 
account of the dog-skin inking-balls. 

He had two ruling passions : the influence he 
thought himself entitled to exert over women ; 
and his disposition to play practical jokes on 
men. Both the first and the second of these 
weaknesses grew out of his confidence that he 
had nothing to fear from either sex. Neverthe- 
less he had felt forced to admit that his charms 
had never prevailed with Amy Falconer. He 
had often wondered how she could resist ; but 
she had resisted without the least effort. Still, 
he pursued, and he had once told her with smil- 
ing candour that if she did not mind the pur- 
suit, he did not mind the chase. Only, he never 
urged it into the presence of Mrs. Falconer, of 
whom alone he stood in speechless, easily com- 
prehensible awe. Perhaps to-night — as Amy 


The Choir Invisible 


io\ 


had never seen him in bgll-dress — she might 
begin to succumb ; he had just placed her under 
obligation to him by an unexpected stroke of 
good fortune ; and finally he had executed one 
neat stratagem at the expense of Mr. Bradford 
and another at the expense of John Gray. So 
that esteeming himself in a fair way to gratify 
one passion and having already gratified the 
other, he leaned back in his chair, smiling, 
smoking, drinking. 

He had just risen to pinch the wick in the 
lamp overhead when a knock sounded on the 
door, and to his surprise and displeasure — for 
he thought he had bolted it — there entered 
without waiting to be bidden a low, broad- 
chested, barefooted, blond fellow, his brown-tow 
breeches rolled up to his knees, showing a pair 
of fine white calves ; a clean shirt thrown open 
at the neck and rolled up to the elbows, dis- 
playing a noble pair of arms; a ruddy shine 
on his good-humoured face ; a drenched look 
about his short, thick, whitish hair ; and a com- 
fortable smell of soap emanating from his entire 
person. 

Seeing him, O’Bannon looked less displeased; 
but keeping his seat and merely taking the pipe 


102 


The Choir Invisible 


from his lips, he said, with an air of sarcasm, 
“ I would have invited you to come in, Peter, 
but I see you have not waited for the invita- 
tion.” 

Peter deigned no reply ; but walking forward, 
he clapped down on the oak slab a round hand- 
ful of shillings and pence. “ Count it, and see 
if it’s all there,” he said, taking a short cob 
pipe out of his mouth and planting his other 
hand stoutly on his hip. 

“What’s this for.^^” O’Bannon spoke in a 
tone of wounded astonishment. 

“What do you suppose it’s for.? Didn’t I 
hear you’ve been out collecting .?” 

“Well, you have had an advertisement run- 
ning in the paper for some time.” 

“ That’s what it’s for then ! And what’s 
more, Pve got the money to pay for a better 
one, whenever you’ll write it.” 

“ Sit down, sit down, sit down ! ” O’Bannon 
jumped from his chair, hurried across the 
room — a little unsteadily — emptied a pile 
of things on the floor, and dragged back a 
heavy oak stool. “ Sit down. And Peter .? ” 
he added inquiringly, tapping his empty drink- 
ing-cup. 


The Choir Invisible 


103 


Peter nodded his willingness. O’Bannon drew 
a key from his pocket and shook it temptingly 
under Peter’s nose. Then he bolted the door 
and unlocked the cupboard, displaying a shelf 
filled with bottles. 

“ All for advertisements ! ” he said, waving 
his hand at the collection. “And a joke on 
Mr. Bradford. Fourth-proof French brandy, 
Jamaica rum, Holland gin, cherry bounce, 
Martinique cordial, Madeira, port, sherry, cider. 
All for advertisements ! Two or three of these 
dealers have been running bills up, and to-day 
I stepped in and told them we’d submit to be 
paid in merchandise of this kind. And here’s 
the merchandise. What brand of merchandise 
will you take ? ” 

“We had better take what you have been 
taking.” 

“As you please.” He brought forward 
another drinking-cup and a bottle. 

“ Hold on ! cried Peter, laying a hand on 
his arm. “ My advertisement first ! ” 

“ As you please.” 

“About twice as long as the other one,” 
instructed Peter. 

“As you please.” O’Bannon set the bottle 


104 Choir Invisible 

down, took up a goose-quill, and drew a sheet 
of paper before him. 

“ My business is increasing,” prompted Peter 
still further, with a puzzled look as to what 
should come next. “ Put that in !” 

“Of course,” said O’Bannon. “I always put 
that in.” 

He was thinking impatiently about the ball 
and he wrote out something quickly and read 
it aloud with a thick, unsteady utterance : 

“ ‘ Mr. Peter Springle continues to carry on 
the blacksmith business opposite the Sign of the 
Indian Queen. Mr. Springle cannot be rivalled 
in his shoeing of horses. He keeps on hand a 
constant supply of axes, chains, and hoes, which 
he will sell at prices usually asked — ’ ” 

“ Stop,” interrupted Peter, who had sniffed a 
strange, delicious odour of personal praise in 
the second sentence. “You might say some- 
thing more about me^ before you bring in the 
axes.” 

“As you please.” 

“ ‘ Mr. Peter Springle executes his work with 
satisfaction and despatch ; his work is second 
to none in Kentucky ; no one surpasses him ; 
he is a noted horseshoer ; he does nothing 


The Choir Invisible 


105 

but shoe horses/ ” He looked at Peter inquir- 
ingly. 

“That sounds more like it,” admitted Peter. 
“Is that enough ? ” 

“ Oh, if that’s all you can saj/ / ” 

“ * Mr. Springle devotes himself entirely to the 
shoeing of fine horses ; Jine horses are often in- 
jured by neglect in shoeing ; Mr. Springle does 
not injure j^7ie horses, but shoes them all 
around with new shoes at one dollar for each 
horse.’ ” 

“Better,” said Peter. “Only, don’t say so 
much about the horses! Say more about — ” 
“ * Mr. Springle is the greatest blacksmith 
that ever left New Jersey — ’ ” 

“Or that ever lived in New Jersey.” 
O’Bannon rose and pinched the cotton wick, 
seized the bottle, and poured out more liquor. 

“ Peter,” he said, squaring himself, “ I’m 
going to let you into a secret. If you were 
not drunk, I wouldn’t tell you. You’ll forget 
it by morning.” 

“If I were half as drunk as you are, I 
couldn’t listen,” retorted Peter. “ I don’t 
want to know any secrets. I tell everything 
I know.” 


io6 The Choir Invisible 

“You don’t know any secrets? You don’t 
know that last week Horatio Turpin sold a ten- 
dollar horse in front of your shop for a hundred 
because he had — ” 

“Oh, I know some secrets about horses,” 
admitted Peter, carelessly. 

“ It’s a secret about a horse I’m going to tell 
you,” said O’Bannon. 

“ Here is an advertisement that has been left 
to be inserted in the next paper: ‘Lost, on 
Tuesday evening, on the road between Frank- 
fort and Lexington, a bundle of clothes tied 
up in a blue-and-white checked cotton necker- 
chief, and containing one white muslin dress, 
a pale-blue silk coat, two thin white muslin 
handkerchiefs, one pair long kid gloves — straw 
colour — one pair white kid shoes, two cambric 
handkerchiefs, and some other things. Who- 
ever will deliver said clothes to the printer, 
or give information so that they can be got, 
will be liberally rewarded on application to 
him.’ 

“And here, Peter, is another advertisement. 
‘Found, on Tuesday evening, on the road be- 
tween Lexington and P'rankfort, a bundle of 
clothes tied in a blue-and-white neckerchief. 


The Choir Invisible 


107 


The owner can recover property by calling on 
the printer/” 

He pushed the papers away from him. 

‘‘Yesterday morning who should slip around 
here but Amy Falconer. And then, in such a 
voice, she began. How she had come to town 
the day before, and had brought her party 
dress. How the bundle was lost. How she 
had come to inquire whether any one had left 
the clothes to be advertised ; or whether I 
wouldn’t put an advertisement in the paper; 
or, if they were left at my office before Thurs- 
day evening, whether I wouldn’t send them to 
her at once.” 

“Ahem!” said Peter drily, but with moist 
ure in his eyes. 

“She hadn’t more than gone before who 
should come in here but a boy bringing this 
same bundle of clothes with a note from John 
Gray, saying that he had found them in the 
public road yesterday, and asking me to send 
them at once to the owner, if I should hear 
who she was ; if not, to advertise them.” 

“That’s no secret,” said Peter contempt- 
uously. 

“I might have sent that bundle straight to 


io8 The Choir Invisible 

the owner of it. But, when I have anything 
against a man, I always forgive him, only — 
I get even with him first.” 

What are you hammering at } ” cried Peter, 
bringing his fist down on the table. ** Hit the 
nail on the head.” 

*‘Now I’ve got no grudge against her,” con- 
tinued O’Bannon. “ I’d hate her if I could. 
I’ve tried hard enough, but I can’t. She may 
treat me as she pleases : it’s all the same to 
me as soon as she smiles. But as for this red- 
headed Scotch-Irishman — ” 

Stop ! ” said Peter. “Not a word against 
him!” 

O’Bannon stared. 

“He’s no friend of yours,” said he, reflec- 
tively. 

“He is!” 

“ Oh, is he ? Well, only the other day 1 
heard him say that he thought a good deal 
more of your shoes than he did of you,” cried 
O’Bannon, laughing sarcastically. 

Peter made no reply, but his neck seemed to 
swell and his face to be getting purple. 

“And he’s a friend of yours.? I can’t even 
play a little joke on him.” 


The Choir Invisible 


109 

Play your joke on him ! ” exclaimed Peter, 
and when my time comes, I’ll play mine.” 
“When he sent the bundle here yesterday 
morning I could have returned it straight to 
her. / locked it in that closet ! ‘ Yotlll never 

go to the ball with her,’ I said, ‘if I have to 
keep her away.’ I set my trap. To-day I 
hunted up Joseph Holden. * Come by the 
office, as you are on your way to the party 
to-night,’ I said. ‘ I want to talk to you about 
a piece of land. Come early ; then we can go 
together.’ When he came — just before you 
did — I said, ‘ Look here, did you know that 
Amy wouldn’t be at the ball ? She lost her 
clothes as she was coming to town the other 
day, and somebody has just sent them here to be 
advertised. I think I’d better take them around 
to her yet : it’s not too late.’ ‘/’// take them! 
I’ll go with her myself I ’ he cried, jumping up. 

“So she’ll be there, he’ll be there. I’ll be 
there, we’ll all be there — but your John can 
hear about it in the morning.” And O’Bannon 
arose slowly, but unexpectedly sat down again. 

“You think I won’t be there,” he said threat- 
eningly to Peter. “ You think I’m drunk. I’ll 
show you I I’ll show you that I can walk — 


no 


The Choir Invisible 


that I can dance — dance by myself — do it all 
— by myself — furnish the music and do the 
dancing.” 

He began whistling Sir Roger de Coverley,” 
and stood up, but sank down again and reached 
for the bottle. 

** Peter,” he said with a soft smile, looking 
down at his gorgeous swan’s-down waistcoat and 
his well-shaped dove-coloured legs: “ain’t I a 
beauty 

“Yes, you are a beauty!” said Peter. 

Suddenly lifting one of his bare feet, he 
shot O’Bannon as by the action of a catapult 
against the printing-press. 

He lay there all night. 


IX 


How fine a thing it would be if all the facul- 
ties of the mind could be trained for the battles 
of life as a modern nation makes every man a 
soldier. Some of these, as we know, are always 
engaged in active service ; but there are times 
when they need to be strengthened by others, 
constituting a first reserve ; and yet graver 
emergencies arise in the marchings of every 
man when the last defences of land and hearth 
should be ready to turn out : too often even 
then the entire disciplined strength of his forces 
would count as a mere handful to the great allied 
powers of the world and the devil. 

But so few of our faculties are of a truly mili- 
tary turn, and these wax indolent and unwary 
from disuse like troops during long times of 
peace. We all come to recognize sooner or 
later, of course, the unfailing little band of 
them that form our stand-by, our battle-smoked 
campaigners, our Old Guard, that dies, never 
surrenders. Who of us also but knows his 


III 


II2 


The Choir Invisible 


faithful artillery, dragging along his big guns — 
and so liable to reach the scene after the fight- 
ing is over ? Who when worsted has not fought 
many a battle through again merely to show 
how different the result would have been, if 
his artillery had only arrived in time ! Boom ! 
boom ! boom ! Where are the enemy now ? 
And who does not take pride in his navy, 
sweeping the high seas of the imagination but 
too often departed for some foreign port when 
the coast defences need protecting ? 

Beyond this general dismemberment of our 
resources do we not all feel the presence within 
us of certain renegades ? Does there not exist 
inside every man a certain big, ferocious-looking 
faculty who is his drum major — loving to strut 
at the head of a peaceful parade and twirl his 
bawble and roll his eyes at the children and 
scowl back at the quiet intrepid fellows behind 
as though they were his personal prisoners ? 
Let but a skirmish threaten, and our dear, fero- 
cious, fat major — ! not even in the rear — not 
even on the field ! Then there is a rattling 
little mannikin who sleeps in the barracks of 
the brain and is good for nothing but to beat 
the cerebral drum. There is a certain awkward 


The Choir Invisible 


113 

squad — too easily identified — who have been 
drafted again and again into service only to 
be in the way of every skilled manoeuvre, only 
to be mustered out as raw recruits at the very 
end of life. And, finally, there is a miscellane- 
ous crowd of our faculties scattered far and near 
at their humdrum peaceful occupations ; so that 
if a quick call for war be heard, these do but 
behave as a populace that rushes into a street 
to gaze at the national guard already marching 
past, some of the spectators not even grateful, 
not even cheering. 

All that day John had to fight a battle for 
which he had never been trained ; moreover he 
had been compelled to divide his forces : there 
was the far-off solemn battle going on in his 
private thoughts ; and there was the usual siege 
of duties in the school. For once he would 
gladly have shirked the latter; but the single 
compensation he always tried to wrest from the 
disagreeable things of life was to do them in 
such a way that they would never fester in his 
conscience like thorns broken off in the flesh. 

During the forenoon, therefore, by an effort 
which only those who have experienced it can 
understand, he ordered off all communication 


I 


The Choir Invisible 


1 14 

with larger troubles and confined himself in 
that stifling prison-house of the mind where the 
perplexities and toils of childhood become enor- 
mous and everything else in the world grows 
small. Up under the joists there was the ter- 
rible struggle of a fly in a web, at first more 
and more violent, then ceasing in a strain so 
fine that the ear could scarce take it ; a bee 
came in one window, went out another ; a rat, 
sniffing greedily at its hole, crept toward a 
crumb under a bench, ran back, crept nearer, 
seized it and was gone ; a toiling slate-pencil 
grated on its way as arduously as a wagon up 
a hill ; he had to teach a beginner its letters. 
These were the great happenings. At noon 
the same child that had brought him a note on 
the day before came with another: 

Kitty is going to the ball with Horatio. I 
shall be alone. We can have our talk unin- 
terrupted. How unreasonable you are ! Why 
don’t you understand things without wanting 
to have them explained } If you wish to go 
to the ball, you can do this afterwards. Don’t 
come till Kitty has gone.” 

Duties in the school till near sunset, then 
letters. O’Bannon had told him that Mr. Brad- 


The Choir Invisible 


115 

ford’s post-rider would leave at four o’clock 
next morning ; if he had letters to send, they 
must be deposited in the box that night. Gray 
had letters of the utmost importance to write 
— to his lawyer regarding the late decision in 
his will case, and to the secretary of the Demo- 
cratic Club in Philadelphia touching the revival 
of activity in the clubs throughout the country 
on account of the expected treaty with England. 

After he had finished them, he strolled slowly 
about the dark town — past his school-house, 
thinking that his teaching days would soon 
be over — past Peter’s blacksmith shop, think- 
ing what a good fellow he always was — past 
Mr. Bradford’s editorial room, with a light 
under the door and the curtain drawn across 
the window. Two or three times he lingered 
before show-windows of merchandise. He had 
some taste in snuff-boxes, being the inheritor 
of several from his Scotch and Irish ancestors ; 
and there were a few in the new silversmith’s 
window which he found little to his liking. As 
he passed a tavern, a group of Revolutionary 
officers, not yet gone to the ball, were having 
a time of it over their pipes and memories ; 
and he paused to hear one finish a yarn of 


ii6 The Choir Invisible 

strong fibre about the battle of King’s Moun- 
tain. Couples went hurrying by him beauti- 
fully dressed. Once down a dark street he 
fancied that he distinguished Amy’s laughter 
ringing faintly out on the still air ; and once 
down another he clearly heard the long cry 
of a pet panther kept by a young backwoods 
hunter. 

The Poythress homestead was wrapped in 
silence as he stepped upon the porch ; but the 
door was open, there was a light inside, and 
by means of this he discovered, lying asleep 
on the threshold, a lad who was apprentice to 
the new English silversmith of the town and a 
lodger at the minister’s — the bond of acquaint- 
anceship being the memory of John Wesley 
who had sprinkled the lad’s father in England. 

John laid a hand on his shoulder and tried 
to break his slumber. He opened his eyes at 
last and said, “ Nobody at home,” and went 
to sleep again. When thoroughly aroused, he 
sat up. Mr. and Mrs. Poythress had been 
called away to some sick person ; they had 
asked him to sit up till they came back ; he 
wished they’d come ; he didn’t see how he 
was ever to learn how to make watches if 


The Choir Invisible 


117 

he couldn’t get any sleep; and he lay down 
again. 

John aroused him again. 

“Miss Falconer is here; will you tell her 
I wish to see her } ” 

The lad didn’t open his eyes but said 
dreamily : 

“ She’s not here ; she’s gone to the party.” 

John lifted him and set him on his feet. 
Then he put his hands on his shoulders and 
shook him : 

“You are asleep! Wake up I Tell Miss 
Falconer I wish to see her.” 

The lad seized Gray by the arms and shook 
him with all his might. 

“You wake up,” he cried. “I tell you she’s 
gone to the party. Do you hear ? She’s gone 
to the party! Now go away, will you How 
am I ever to be a silversmith, if I can’t get any 
sleep ? ” And stretching himself once more on 
the settee, he closed his eyes. 

John turned straight to the Wilkinsons’. His 
gait was not hurried ; whatever his face may 
have expressed was hidden by the darkness. 
The tense quietude of his mind was like that 
of a summer tree, not one of whose thousands 


Ii8 The Choir Invisible 

of leaves quivers along the edge, but toward 
which a tempest is rolling in the distance. 

The house was set close to the street. The 
windows were open ; long bars of light fell out ; 
as he stepped forward to the threshold, the fid- 
dlers struck up Sir Roger de Coverley ” ; the 
company parted in lines to the right and left, 
leaving a vacant space down the middle of 
the room ; and into this vacant space he saw 
Joseph lead Amy and the two begin to dance. 

She wore a white muslin dress — a little skih 
ful work had restored its freshness ; a blue 
silk coat of the loveliest hue ; a wide white lace 
tucker caught across her round bosom with a 
bunch of cinnamon roses ; and straw-coloured 
kid gloves, reaching far up her snow-white arms. 
Her hair was coiled high on the crown of her 
head and airily overtopped by a great curiously 
carved silver-and-tortoise-shell comb ; and un- 
der her dress played the white mice of her feet. 
The tints of her skin were pearl and rose ; her 
red lips parted in smiles. She was radiant 
with excitement, happiness, youth. She culled 
admiration, visiting all eyes with hers as a bee 
all flowers. It was not the flowers she cared for. 

He did not see her dress ; he did not recog- 


The Choir Invisible 


1 19 

nize the garments that had hung on the wall 
of his room. What he did see and continued 
to see was the fact that she was there and danc- 
ing with Joseph. 

If he had stepped on a rattlesnake, he could 
nct have been more horribly, more miserably 
stung. He had the sense of being poisoned, as 
though actual venom were coursing through his 
blood. There was one swift backward move- 
ment of his mind over the chain of forerunning 
events. 

She is a venomous little serpent ! ” he 
groaned aloud. ‘^And I have been crawling 
in the dust to her, to be stung like this ! ” He 
walked quietly into the house. 

He sought his hostess first. He found her 
in the centre of a group of ladies, wearing the 
toilet of the past Revolutionary period in the 
capitals of the East. The vision dazzled him, 
bewildered him. But he swept his eye over 
them with one feeling of heart-sickness and 
asked his hostess one question : was Mrs. Fal- 
coner there } She was not. 

In another room he found his host, and a 
group of Revolutionary officers and other tried 
historic men, surrounding the Governor. 


120 


The Choir Invisible 


They were discussing the letters that had 
passed between the President and his Excel- 
lency for the suppression of a revolution in 
Kentucky. During this spring of 1795 the 
news had reached Kentucky that Jay had at 
last concluded a treaty with England. The 
ratification of this was to be followed by the 
surrender of those terrible Northwestern posts 
that for twenty years had been the source of 
destruction and despair to the single-handed, 
maddened, or massacred Kentuckians. Behind 
these forts had rested the inexhaustible power 
of the Indian confederacies, of Canada, of Eng- 
land. Out of them, summer after summer, 
armies that knew no pity had swarmed down 
upon the doggedly advancing line of the Anglo- 
Saxon frontiersmen. Against them, sometimes 
unaided, sometimes with the aid of Virginia 
or of the National Government, the pioneers 
hurled their frantic retaliating armies : Clarke 
and Boone and Kenton often and often ; Har- 
mar followed by St. Clair ; St. Clair followed by 
Wayne. It was for the old failure to give aid 
against these that Kentucky had hated Virginia 
and resolved to tear herself loose from the 
mother State and either perish or triumph alone. 


The Choir Invisible 


I2I 


It was for the failure to give aid against these 
that Kentucky hated Washington, hated the 
East, hated the National Government, and 
plotted to wrest Kentucky away from the 
Union, and either make her an independent 
power or ally her with France or Spain. 

But over the sea now France — France that 
had come to the rescue of the colonies in their 
struggle for independence — this same beauti- 
ful, passionate France was fighting all Europe 
unaided and victorious. The spectacle had 
amazed the world. In no other spot had sym- 
pathy been more fiercely kindled than along 
that Western border where life was always tense 
with martial passion. It had passed from 
station to station, like a torch blazing in the 
darkness and with a two-forked fire — grati- 
tude to France, hatred of England — hatred 
rankling in a people who had come out of 
the very heart of the English stock as you 
would hew the heart out of a tree. So that 
when, two years before this. Citizen Genet, the 
ambassador of the French republic, had landed 
at Charleston, been driven through the country 
to New York amid the acclamations of French 
sympathizers, and disregarding the President’s 


122 


The Choir Invisible 


proclamation of neutrality, had begun to equip 
privateers and enlist crews to act against the 
commerce of England and Spain, it was to the 
backwoodsmen of Kentucky that he sent four 
agents, to enlist an army, appoint a generalis- 
simo, and descend upon the Spanish settle- 
ments at the mouth of the Mississippi — those 
same hated settlements that had refused to 
the Kentuckians the right of navigation for 
their commerce, thus shutting them off from 
the world by water, as the mountains shut 
them off from the world by land. 

Hence the Jacobin clubs that were formed 
in Kentucky : one at Lexington, a second at 
Georgetown, a third at Paris. Hence the lib- 
erty poles in the streets of the towns ; the tri- 
coloured cockades on the hats of the men ; the 
hot blood between the anti-federal and the fed- 
eralist parties of the State. 

The actions of Citizen Genet had indeed been 
disavowed by his republic. But the sympathy 
for France, the hatred of England and of Spain, 
had but grown meantime; and when there- 
fore in this spring of 1795 the news reached 
the frontier that Jay had concluded a treaty 
with England — the very treaty that would 


The Choir Invisible 


123 


bring to the Kentuckians the end of all their 
troubles with the posts of the Northwest — 
the flame of revolution blazed out with greater 
brilliancy. 

During the hour that John Gray spent in 
that assemblage of men that night, the talk led 
always to the same front of offence : the base 
truckling to England, an old enemy ; the baser 
desertion of France, a friend. He listened to 
one man of commanding eloquence, while he 
traced the treaty to the attachment of Wash- 
ington for aristocratic institutions; to another 
who referred it to the jealousy felt by the 
Eastern congressmen regarding the growth of 
the new power beyond the Alleghanies ; to 
a third who foretold that like all foregoing 
pledges it would leave Kentucky still exposed 
to the fury of the Northern Indians ; to a 
fourth who declared that let the treaty be 
once ratified with Lord Granville, and in the 
same old faithless way, nothing more would be 
done to extort from Spain for Kentucky the 
open passage of the Mississippi. 

At any other time he would have borne his 
part in these discussions. Now he scarcely 
heard them. All the forces of his mind were 


124 


The Choir Invisible 


away on another battle-field and he longed to 
be absent with them, a field strewn with the 
sorrowful carnage of ideal and hope and plan, 
home, happiness, love. He was hardly aware 
that his own actions must seem unusual, until 
one of the older men took him affectionately 
by the hand and said : 

Marshall tells me that you teach school 
till sunset and read law till sunrise; and to- 
night you come here with your eyes blazing 
and your skin as pallid and dry as a monk’s. 
Take off the leeches of the law for a good 
month, John ! They abstract too much blood. 
If the Senate ratifies in June the treachery of 
Jay and Lord Granville, there will be more 
work than ever for the Democratic Societies in 
this country, and nowhere more than in Ken- 
tucky. We shall need you then more than 
the law needs you now, or than you need 
it. Save yourself for the cause of your tri- 
colour. You shall have a chance to rub the 
velvet off your antlers.” 

‘‘ We shall soon put him beyond the reach of 
his law,” said a member of the Transylvania 
Library Committee. “As soon as his school 
is out, we are going to send him to ask sub- 


The Choir Invisible 


125 


scriptions from the President, the Vice-Presi- 
dent, and others, and then on to Philadelphia 
to buy the books.” 

A shadow fell upon the face of another 
officer, and in a lowered tone he said, with cold 
emphasis : 

am sorry that the citizens of this town 
should stoop to ask anything from such a man 
as George Washington.” 

The schoolmaster scarcely realized what he 
had done when he consented to act as a 
secret emissary of the Jacobin Club of Lex- 
ington to the club in Philadelphia during the 
summer. 

The political talk ended at last, the gen- 
tlemen returned to the ladies. He found 
himself standing in a doorway beside an 
elderly man of the most polished bearing 
and graceful manners, who was watching a 
minuet. 

Ah ! ” he said, waving his hand with delight 
toward the scene. This is Virginia and Mary- 
land brought into the West ! It reminds me 
of the days when I danced with Martha Custis 
and Dolly Madison. Some day, with a begin- 
ning like this, Kentucky will be celebrated for 


126 


The Choir hivisible 


its beautiful women. The daughters and the 
granddaughters and the great-granddaughters 
of such mothers as these — ” 

'‘And of fathers like these!” interposed one 
of the town trustees who came up at that 
moment. “But for the sake of these ladies 
isn’t it time we were passing a law against the 
keeping of pet panthers } I heard the cry of 
one as I came here to-night. What can we do 
with these young backwoods hunters } Will 
civilization ever make pets of them — ever tame 
them.?” 

John felt some one touch his arm ; it was 
Kitty with Horatio. Her cheeks were like 
poppies ; her good kind eyes welcomed him 
sincerely. 

“ You here I I’m so glad. Haven’t you seen 
Amy.? She is in the other room with Joseph. 
Have they explained everything.? But we will 
lose our places — ” she cried, and with a sweet 
smile of adieu to him, and of warning to her 
partner, she glided away. 

“We are entered for this horse race,” re- 
marked Mr. Turpin, lingering a moment longer. 
“Weight for age, agreeable to the rules of New 
Market. Each subscriber to pay one guinea, etc.. 


The Choir Invisible 


127 


etc., etc.” He was known as the rising young 
turfman of the town, having first run his horses 
down Main Street, and then down Water Street ; 
but future member of the first Jockey Club; so 
that in the full blossom of his power he could 
name all the horses of his day with the pedigree 
of each : beginning with Tiger by Tiger, and on 
through Sea Serpent by Shylock, and Diamond 
by Brilliant, and Black Snake by Sky Lark : a 
type of man whom long association with the re- 
fined and noble nature of the horse only vul- 
garizes and disennobles. 

Once afterward Gray’s glance fell on Amy 
and Joseph across the room. They were look- 
ing at him and laughing at his expense and the 
sight burnt his eyes as though hot needles had 
been run into them. They beckoned gaily, 
but he gave no sign ; and in a moment they 
were lost behind the shifting figures of the com- 
pany. While he was dancing, however, Joseph 
came up. 

^‘As soon as you get away, Amy wants to 
see you.” 

Half an hour later he came a second time 
and drew Gray aside from a group of gentle* 
men, speaking more seriously : 


128 


The Choir Invisible 


‘*Amy wants to explain how all this hap 
pened. Come at once.” 

** There is nothing to explain,” said John, with 
indifference. 

Joseph answered reproachfully : 

‘‘This is foolish, John! When you know 
what has passed, you will not censure her. And 
I could not have done otherwise.” Despite his 
wish to be serious, he could not help laughing 
for he was very happy himself. 

But to John Gray these reasonable words 
went for the very thing that they did not mean. 
His mind had been forced to a false point of 
view ; and from a false point of view the truth 
itself always looks false. Moreover it was intol 
erable that Joseph should be defending to him 
the very woman whom a few hours before he 
had hoped to marry. 

“There is no explanation needed from her,” 
he replied, with the same indifference. “ I think 
I understand. What I do not understand I 
should rather take for granted. But yon, Joseph, 
you owe me an explanation. This is not the 
place to give it. ” His face twitched, and he 
knotted the fingers of his large hands together 
like bands of iron. “ But by God I’ll have it ; 


The Choir Invisible 


129 


and if it is not a good one, you shall answer. ” 
His oath sounded like an invocation to the 
Divine Justice — not profanity. 

Joseph fixed his quiet fearless eyes on Gray’s. 
‘‘I’ll answer for myself — and for her” — he 
replied and turned away. 

Still later Gray met her while dancing — the 
faint rose of her cheeks a shade deeper, the 
dazzling whiteness of her skin more pearl-like 
with warmth, her gaiety and happiness still 
mounting, her eyes still wandering among the 
men, culling their admiration. 

“You haven’t asked me to dance to-night. 
You haven’t even let me tell you why I had to 
come with Joseph, when I wanted to come with 
you.” She gave a little pout of annoyance and 
let her eyes rest on his with the old fondness. 
“Don’t you want to know why I broke my 
engagement with you } ” And she danced on, 
smiling back at him provokingly. 

He did not show that he heard ; and although 
they did not meet again, he was made aware 
that a change had at last come over her. She 
was angry now. He could hear her laughter 
oftener — laughter that was meant for his ear — 
and she was dancing oftener with Joseph. He 


130 


The Choir Invisible 


looked at her repeatedly, but she avoided his 
eyes. 

I am playing a poor part by staying here ! ” 
he said with shame, and left the house. 

After wandering aimlessly about the town 
for some two hours, he went resolvedly back 
again and stood out in the darkness, looking in 
at her through the windows. There she was, 
unwearied, happy, not feigning ; and no more 
affected by what had taken place between them 
than a candle is affected by a scorched insect. 
So it seemed to him. 

This was the first time he had ever seen her 
at a ball. He had never realized what powers 
she possessed in a field like this : what play, 
what resources, what changes, what stratagems, 
what victories. He mournfully missed for the 
first time certain things in himself that should 
have corresponded with all those light and 
graceful things in her. 

Perhaps what hurt him most were her eyes, 
always abroad searching for admiration, forever 
filling the forever emptied honey -comb of self- 
love. 

With him love was a sacred, a grim, an invio- 
late selection. He would no more have wished 


The Choir hivisible 


131 

the woman he had chosen to seek indiscrimi- 
nate admiration with her eyes than with her 
lips or her waist. It implied the same fatal 
flaw in her refinement, her modesty, her faithful- 
ness, her high breeding. 

A light wind stirred the leaves of the trees 
overhead. A few drops of rain fell on his hat. 
He drew his hand heavily across his eyes and 
turned away. Reaching his room, he dropped 
down into a chair before his open window and 
sat gazing absently into the black east. 

Within he faced a yet blacker void — the 
ruined hopes on which the sun would never 
rise again. 

It was the end of everything between him 
and Amy : that was his one thought. It did 
not occur to him even to reflect whether he 
had been right or wrong, rude or gentle : it 
was the end : nothing else appeared worth 
considering. 

Life to him meant a simple straightforward 
game played with a few well-known principles. 
It must be as open as a chess-board : each player 
should see every move of the other : and all who 
chose could look on. 

He was still very young. 


X 


The glimmer of gray dawn at last and he had 
never moved from his seat. A fine, drizzling 
rain had set in. Clouds of mist brushed against 
the walls of his cabin. In the stillness he could 
hear the big trees shedding their drops from 
leaf to bending leaf and the musical tinkle of 
these as they took their last leap into little 
pools below. 

With the chilliness which misery brings he 
got up at last and wrapped his weather-coat 
about him. If it were only day when he could 
go to his work and try to forget ! Restless, 
sleepless, unable to read, tired of sitting, driven 
on by the desire to get rid of his own thoughts, 
he started out to walk. 

As he passed his school-house he noticed that 
the door of it, always fastened by a simple latch, 
now stood open ; and he went over to see if 
everything inside were in order. All his life, 
when any trouble had come upon him, he had 


132 


The Choir Invisible 


133 


quickly returned to his nearest post of duty like 
a soldier ; and once in the school-room now, he 
threw himself down in his chair with the sudden 
feeling that here in his familiar work he must 
still find his home — the home of his mind and 
his affections — as so long in the past. The 
mere aspect of the poor bare place had never 
been so kind. The very walls appeared to 
open to him like a refuge, to enfold themselves 
around him with friendly strength and under- 
standing. 

He sat at the upper end of the room, gazing 
blankly through the doorway at the gray light 
and clouds of white mist trailing. Once an 
object came into the field of his vision. At 
the first glimpse he thought it a dog — long, 
lean, skulking, prowling, tawny — on the scent 
of his tracks. Then the mist passed over it. 
When he beheld it again it had approached 
nearer and was creeping rapidly toward the 
door. His listless eyes grew fascinated by 
its motions — its litheness, suppleness, grace, 
stealth, exquisite caution. Never before had 
he seen a dog with the step of a cat. A sec- 
ond time the fog closed over it, and then, 
advancing right out of the cloud with more 


134 


The Choir Invisible 


swiftness, more cunning, its large feet falling 
as lightly as flakes of snow, the weight of its 
huge body borne forward as noiselessly as the 
trailing mist, it came straight on. It reached 
the hickory block, which formed the doorstep ; 
it paused there an instant, with its fore quarters 
in the doorway, one fore foot raised, the end of its 
long tail waving ; and then it stole just over the 
threshold and crouched, its head pressed down 
until its long, whitish throat lay on the floor ; 
its short, jagged ears set forward stiffly like the 
broken points of a javelin ; its dilated eye blaz- 
ing with steady green fire — as still as death. 
And then with his blood become as ice in his 
veins from horror and all the strength gone out 
of him in a death-like faintness, the school- 
master realized that he was face to face un- 
armed with a cougar, gaunt with famine and 
come for its kill. 

This dreaded animal, the panther or painter 
of the backwoodsman, which has for its kindred 
the royal tiger and the fatal leopard of the Old 
World, the beautiful ocelot and splendid un- 
conquerable jaguar of the New, is now rarely 
found in the Atlantic States or the fastnesses 
of the Alleghanies. It too has crossed the 


The Choir Invisible 


135 


Mississippi and is probably now best known 
as the savage puma of more southern zones. 
But a hundred years ago it abounded through- 
out the Western wilderness, making its deeper 
dens in the caverns of mountain rocks, its lair 
in the impenetrable thickets of bramble and 
brakes of cane, or close to miry swamps and 
watery everglades ; and no other region was 
so loved by it as the vast game park of the 
Indians, where reigned a semi-tropical splen- 
dour and luxuriance of vegetation and where, 
protected from time immemorial by the Indian 
hunters themselves, all the other animals that 
constitute its prey roved and ranged in un- 
imaginable numbers. To the earliest Ken- 
tuckians who cut their way into this, the most 
royal jungle of the New World, to wrest it from 
the Indians and subdue it for wife and child, 
it was the noiseless nocturnal cougar that filled 
their imaginations with the last degree of dread. 
To them its cry — most peculiar and startling 
at the love season, at other times described as 
like the wail of a child or of a traveller lost in 
the woods — aroused more terror than the near 
est bark of the wolf; its stealth and cunning 
more than the strength and courage and address 


The Choir Invisible 


136 

of the bear; its attack more than the rush of 
the majestic, resistless bison, or the furious 
pass with antlers lowered of the noble, amber- 
eyed, infuriated elk. Hidden as still as an 
adder in long grass of its own hue, or squat 
on a log, or amid the foliage of a sloping tree, 
it waited around the salt licks and the springs 
and along the woodland pathways for the other 
wild creatures. It possessed the strength to 
kill and drag a heifer to its lair ; it would leap 
upon the horse of a traveller and hang there 
unshaken, while with fang and claw it lacer- 
ated the hind quarters and the flanks — as the 
tiger of India tries to hamstring its nobler, 
unmanageable victims ; or let an unwary bul- 
lock but sink a little way in a swamp and it was 
upon him, rending him, devouring him, in his 
long agony. 

Some hunter once had encamped at the foot 
of a tree, cooked his supper, seen his fire die 
out and lain down to sleep, with only the in- 
finite solitude of the woods for his blanket, with 
the dreary, dismal silence for his pillow. Open- 
ing his eyes to look up for the last time at the 
peaceful stars, what he perceived above him 
were two nearer stars set close together, burn- 


The Choir Invisible 


13; 


ing with a green light, never twinkling. Or 
another was startled out of sleep by the terrible 
cry of his tethered horse. Or after a long, 
ominous growl, the cougar had sprung against 
his tent, knocking it away as a squirrel would 
knock the thin shell from a nut to reach the 
kernel ; or at the edge of the thicket of tall 
grass he had struck his foot against the skele- 
ton of some unknown hunter, dragged down 
long before. 

To such adventures with all their natural 
exaggeration John Gray had listened many a 
time as they were recited by old hunters re- 
garding earlier days in the wilderness ; for at 
this period it was thought that the cougar had 
retreated even from the few cane-brakes that 
remained unexplored near the settlements. But 
the deer, timidest of animals, with fatal persist- 
ence returns again and again to its old-time 
ranges and coverts long after the bison, the 
bear, and the elk have wisely abandoned theirs ; 
and the cougar besets the deer. 

It was these stories that he remembered now 
and that filled him with horror, with the faint- 
ness of death. His turn had come at last, he 
said ; and as to the others, it had come without 


138 


The Choir Invisible 


warning. He was too shackled with weakness 
to cry out, to stand up. The windows on each 
side were fastened ; there was no escape. There 
was nothing in the room on which he could lay 
hold — no weapon or piece of wood, or bar of 
iron. If a struggle took place, it would be a 
clean contest between will and will, courage 
and courage, strength and strength, the love 
of prey and the love of life. 

It was well for him that this was not the first 
time he had ever faced death, as he had sup- 
posed ; and that the first thought that had 
rushed into his consciousness before returned 
to him now. That thought was this : that 
death had come far too soon, putting an end to 
his plans to live, to act, to succeed, to make a 
great and a good place for himself in this world 
before he should leave it for another. Out of 
this a second idea now liberated itself with in- 
credible quickness and spread through him like 
a living flame : it was his lifelong attitude of 
victory, his lifelong determination that no mat- 
ter what opposed him he must conquer. Young 
as he was, this triumphant habit had already 
yielded him its due result : that growth of char- 
acter which arises silently within us, built up 


The Choir Invisible 


139 


out of a myriad nameless elements — begin- 
ning at the very bottom of the ocean of un- 
consciousness ; growing as from cell to cell, 
atom to atom — the mere dust of victorious 
experience — the hardening deposits of the 
ever-living, ever-working, ever-rising will ; until 
at last, based on eternal quietude below and 
lifting its wreath of palms above the waves 
of life, it stands finished, indestructible, our 
inward rock of defence against every earthly 
storm. 

Soon his face was worth going far to see. 
He had grown perfectly calm. His weakness 
had been followed by a sense of strength wholly 
extraordinary. His old training in the rough 
athletics of the wilderness had made him sup- 
ple, agile, wary, long-winded. His eyes had 
never known what it was to be subdued ; he 
had never taken them from the cougar. 

Keeping them on it still, he rose slowly from 
the chair, realizing that his chances would be 
better if he were in the middle of the room. 
He stepped round in front of his table and 
walked two paces straight forward and then 
paused, his face as white, as terrible, as death. 
At the instant of bis moving he could see the 


140 The Choir Invisible 

tense drawing in of all the muscles of the cougar 
and the ripple of its skin, as its whole body 
quivered with excitement and desire; and he 
knew that as soon as he stopped it would make 
its spring. 

With a growl that announces that all hiding 
and stealth are over, the leap came. He had 
thrown his body slightly forward to meet it 
with the last thought that whatever happened 
he must guard his throat. It was at this that 
the cougar aimed, leaping almost perpendicu- 
larly, its widespread fore feet reaching for his 
shoulders, while the hind feet grasped at his 
legs. The under part of its body being thus 
exposed, he dealt it a blow with all his strength 
— full in the belly with his foot, and hurled it 
backward. For a second it crouched again, 
measuring him anew, then sprang again. Again 
he struck, but this time the fore feet caught his 
arm as they passed backward ; the sharp, re- 
tractile nails tore their way across the back and 
palm of his hand like dull knives and the blood 
gushed. Instantly the cougar leaped upon the 
long, wooden desk that ran along one side of the 
room, and from that advantage, sprang again ; 
but he bent his body low so that it passed clean 


The Choir Invisible 


141 

over him. Instantly it was upon his desk at his 
back; and before he could more than recover 
his balance and turn, it sprang for the fourth 
time. He threw out his arm to save his throat, 
but the cougar had reached his left shoulder, 
struck its claws deep into his heavy coat ; and 
with a deafening roar sounding close in his 
ears, had buried its fangs near the base of his 
neck, until he heard them click as they met 
through his flesh. 

He staggered, but the desk behind caught 
him. Straightening himself up, and grappling 
the panther with all his strength as he would a 
man, he turned with it and bent it over the 
sharp edge of the ponderous desk, lower, lower, 
trying to break its back. One of the fore feet 
was beginning to tear through his clothing, and 
straightening himself up again, he reached down 
and caught this foot and tried to bend it, break 
it. He threw himself with all his force upon 
the floor, falling with the cougar under him, 
trying to crush it. He staggered to his feet 
again, but stepped on his own blood and fell. 
And then, feeling his blood trickling down 
his breast and his strength going, with one 
last effort he put up his hands and seizing the 


142 


The Choir Invisible 


throat, fastened his fingers like iron rivets 
around the windpipe. And then — with the 
long, loud, hoarse, despairing roar with which 
a man, his mouth half full of water, sinks far 
out in the ocean — he fell again. 


XI 


It was ten o’clock that morning of mid-May. 
The rain was over. Clouds and mists were 
gone, leaving an atmosphere of purest crystal. 
The sun floated a globe of gold in the yielding 
blue. Above the wilderness on a dead tree- 
top, the perch of an eagle now flashing like 
a yellow weather-vane, a thrush poured the 
spray-like far-falling fountain of his notes over 
upon the bowed woods. Beneath him the dull 
green domes of the trees flashed as though 
inlaid with gems, white and rose. Under these 
domes the wild grapevines, climbing the forest 
arches as the oak of stone climbs the arches 
of a cathedral, filled the ceiling and all the 
shadowy spaces between with fresh outbursts 
of their voluptuous dew-born fragrance. And 
around the rough-haired Satyr feet of these 
vines the wild hyacinth, too full of its own 
honey to stand, fell back on its couch of moss 
waiting to be visited by the singing bee. 

The whole woods emerged from the cloudy 


143 


144 


The Choir Invisible 


bath of Nature with the coolness, the freshness, 
the immortal purity of Diana united to the rose- 
ate glow and mortal tenderness of Venus; and 
haunted by two spirits : the chaste, unfading 
youth of Endymion and the dust-born warmth 
and eagerness of Dionysus. 

Through these woods, feeling neither their 
heat nor their cold, secured by Nature against 
any passion for either the cooling star or the 
inflaming dust, rode Amy- — slowly homeward 
from the ball. Yet lovelier, happier than any- 
thing the forest held. She had pushed her 
bonnet entirely off so that it hung by the 
strings at the back of her neck ; and her face 
emerged from the round sheath of it like a pink 
and white tulip, newly risen and bursting forth. 

When she reached home, she turned the old 
horse loose with many pattings and good-byes 
and promises of maple sugar later in the day ; 
and then she bounded away to the garden to 
her aunt, of whom, perhaps, she was more 
truly fond than of any one in the world except 
herself. 

Mrs. Falconer had quickly left off work and 
was advancing very slowly — with mingled haste 
and reluctance — to meet her. 


The Choir Invisible 


145 


“Aunt Jessica! Aunt Jessica!” cried Amy 
in a voice that rang like a small silver bell, “ I 
haven’t seen you for two whole nights and three 
whole days!” Placing her hands on Mrs. Fal- 
coner’s shoulders, she kissed her once on each 
cheek and twice playfully on the pearly tip of 
the chin ; and then she looked into her eyes as 
innocently as a perfect tulip might look at a 
perfect rose. 

Mrs. Falconer smilingly leaned forward and 
touched her lips to Amy’s forehead. The 
caress was as light as thistle-down — perhaps 
no warmer. 

“ Three entire days ! ” she said chidingly. 
“ It has been three months,” and she searched 
through Amy’s eyes onward along the tortuous 
little passages of her heart as a calm blue air 
might search the chambers of a cold beautiful 
sea-shell. 

Each of these women instantly perceived 
that since they had parted a change had taken 
place in the other ; neither was aware that the 
other noticed the change in herself. Mrs. 
Falconer had been dreading to find one in 
Amy when she should come home ; and it was 
the one she saw now that fell as a chill upon 


146 


The Choir Invisible 


her. Amy was triumphantly aware of a decisive 
change in herself, but chose for the present, as 
she thought, to keep it hidden ; and as for any 
change in her aunt — that was an affair of less 
importance. 

“Why, Aunt Jessica!” she exclaimed indig- 
nantly, “ I don’t believe you are glad to see me,” 
and throwing her arms around Mrs. Falconer’s 
neck, she strained her closely. “ But you poor 
dear auntie I Come, sit down. I’m going to 
do all the work now — mine and yours, both. 
Oh ! the beautiful gardening I Rows and rows 
and rows I With all the other work beside. 
And me an idle good-for-nothing I ” 

The two were walking toward a rough bench 
placed under a tree inside the picket fence. 
Amy had thrown her arm around Mrs. Fal- 
coner’s waist. 

“But you went to the ball,” said the elder 
woman. “You were not idle there, I imagine. 
And a ball is good for a great deal. One ought 
to accomplish more there than in a garden. 
Besides, you went with John Gray, and he is 
never idle. Did — he — accomplish — nothing.?” 

“ Indeed, he was not idle I ” exclaimed Amy 
with a jubilant laugh. “ Indeed he did accom- 


The Choir Invisible 


I4I 


plish something — more than he ever did in his 
life before!” 

Mrs. Falconer made no rejoinder; she was 
too poignantly saying to herself : 

“Ah I if it is too late, what will become of 
him ? ” 

The bench was short. Instinctively they 
seated themselves as far apart as possible ; and 
they turned their faces outward across the gar 
den, not toward each other as they had been 
used when sitting thus. 

The one was nineteen — the tulip : with 
springlike charm but perfectly hollow and 
ready to be filled by east wind or west wind, 
north wind or south wind, according as each 
blew last and hardest ; the other thirty-six — 
the rose : in its midsummer splendour with 
fold upon fold of delicate symmetric structures, 
making a masterpiece. 

“Aunt Jessica,” Amy began to say drily, 
as though this were to be her last conces- 
sion to a relationship now about to end, “I 
might as well tell you everything that has 
happened, just as I’ve been used to doing 
since I was a child — when I’ve done anything 
wrong.” 


148 


The Choir Invisible 


She gave a faithful story of the carrying off 
of her party dress, which of course had been 
missed and accounted for, the losing of it and 
the breaking of her engagement with John ; 
the return of it, and her going to the ball with 
Joseph. This brought her mind to the scenes 
of the night, and she abandoned herself mo- 
mentarily to the delight of reviving them. 

“Ah! if you had been there, Aunt Jessica! 
If they had seen you in a ball dress as Tve 
seen you without one : those shoulders I those 
arms ! that skin ! You would have been a swan 
among the rough-necked, red-necked turkeys,” 
and Amy glanced a little enviously at a neck 
that rose out of the plain dress as though 
turned by a sculptor. 

The sincere little compliment beat on Mrs. 
Falconer’s ear like a wave upon a stone. 

“But if you did not go with John Gray, you 
danced with him, you talked with him } ” 

“No,” replied Amy, quickly growing grave, 
“I didn’t dance with him. But we talked — 
yes — not much ; it was a little too serious for 
many words,” and she sank into a mysterious 
silence, seeming even to forget herself in some 
new recess of happiness. 


The Choir Invisible 


149 


Mrs. Falconer was watching her. 

“Ah ! ” she murmured to herself. “ It is too 
late ! too late ! ” She passed her fingers slowly 
across her brow with a feeling that life had 
turned ashen, cold, barren. 

“ How is Kitty ? ” she asked quickly. 

“Well — as always; and stupid.” 

“ She is always kind and good, isn’t she } and 
faithful.” 

“ Kindness is not always interesting, unfortu- 
nately ; and goodness is dreadful, and her faith- 
fulness bores me to death.” 

“ At least, she was your hostess, Amy.” 

“ I lent her my silk stockings or she’d have 
had to wear cotton ones,” exclaimed Amy, 
laughing. “We’re even.” 

“If you were merely paying for a lodging, 
you should have gone to the inn.” 

“ There was nobody at the tavern who could 
wear my silk stockings ; and I had spent all my 
money.” 

“Don’t you expect Kitty to return your 
visit.?” 

“I certainly do — more’s the pity. She has 
such big feet ! ” Amy put out her toe and 
studied it with vixenish satisfaction. 


The Choir Invisible 


150 

Aunt Jessica,” she observed at length, look- 
ing round at her aunt. ‘‘You have to work 
too hard. And I have always been such a care 
to you. Wouldn’t you like to get rid of me } ” 

Mrs. Falconer leaned quickly, imploringly, 
toward her. 

“ Is that a threat, Amy } ” 

Amy waited half a minute and then began 
with a composure that was tinged with conde- 
scension : 

“You have had so much trouble in your life. 
Aunt Jessica; so much sorrow.” 

Mrs. Falconer started and turned upon her 
niece her eyes that were always exquisite with 
refinement. 

“Amy, have I ever spoken to you of the 
troubles of my life ” The reproof was majestic 
in dignity and gentleness. 

“ You have not.” 

“Then will you never speak of them to me — 
never again — while you live ! ” 

Amy began again with a dry, practical voice, 
which had in it the sting of revenge ; her aunt’s 
rebuke had nettled her. 

“At least, I have always been a trouble to 
you. You sew for me, cook for me, make the 


The Choir Invisible 


151 

garden for me, spin and weave for me, and 
worry about me. Uncle has to work for me 
and support me.” 

The turn of the conversation away from her- 
self brought such relief that Mrs. Falconer 
replied even warmly. 

“You have been a great pleasure to him — 
and to me ! The little I have done, you have 
repaid a thousand fold. Think of us at night 
without you! Your uncle on one side of the 
fireplace — me on the other, and you away ! 
Think of us at the table — him at one end, me 
at the other, and you away I Think of me 
alone in the house all day, while he is in the 
fields! Child, I have depended on you — more 
than you will ever understand ! ” she added to 
herself. 

“Aunt Jessica,” observed Amy with the air of 
making a fine calculation, “perhaps uncle would 
think more of you if I were not in the house.” 

“Amy!” 

“ Perhaps you would think more of him ! ” 

“ Amy ! ” 

“ Perhaps if neither of you had me to depend 
on, you might depend more on each other and 
be happier.” 


1^2 


The Choir Invisible 


You speak to me in this way — on a subject 
like this ! You’d better go!” 

“Aunt Jessica,” replied Amy, never budging, 
“ the time has been when I would have done so. 
But it is too late now for you ever to tell me to 
leave your presence. I am a woman ! If I 
had not been, I shouldn’t have said what I just 
have.” 

Mrs. Falconer looked at her in silence. This 
rare gentlewoman had too profound a knowledge 
of the human heart not to realize that she was 
completely vanquished. For where in this world 
is not refinement instantly beaten by coarse- 
ness, gentleness by rudeness, all delicacy by all 
that is indelicate .? What can the finest con- 
sideration avail against no consideration } the 
sweetest forbearance against intrusiveness } the 
beak of the dove against the beak of the hawk ? 
And yet all these may have their victory ; for 
when the finer and the baser metal are forced 
to struggle with each other in the same field, 
the finer may always leave it. 

With unruffled dignity and with a voice that 
Amy had never heard — a voice that brought 
the blood rushing into her cheeks — Mrs. Fal- 
coner replied : 


The Choir Invisible 


153 


“ Yes ; it is true : you are a woman. This is 
the first day that you have ever made me feel 
this. For I have always known that as soon as 
you became one, you would begin to speak to 
me as you have spoken. I shall never again 
request you to leave my presence : when it 
becomes unavoidable, I shall leave yours.” 

She rose and was moving away. Amy 
started up and caught her. 

“Aunt Jessica, I’ve something to tell you!” 
she cried, her face dyed scarlet with the sting. 

Mrs. Falconer released herself gently and re- 
turned to her seat. 

“You know what I mean by what I said.?” 
inquired Amy, still confused but regaining self- 
command rapidly. 

“ I believe I know : you are engaged to be 
married.” 

The words were very faint : they would have 
reached the subtlest ear with the suggestive- 
ness of a light dreary wind blowing over a 
desolation. 

“Yes; I am engaged to be married.” 

Amy affirmed it with a definite stress. 

“ It is this that has made you a woman ? ” 

“ It is this that has made me a woman.” 


54 


The Choir Invisible 


After the silence of a moment Mrs. Falconer 
inquired : 

‘‘ You do not expect to ask my consent — my 
advice.?” 

‘‘ I certainly do not expect to ask your con- 
sent — your advice.” 

Amy was taking her revenge now — and she 
always took it as soon as possible. 

“ Nor your uncle’s .? ” 

“ Nor my uncle’s.” 

After another, longer silence : 

“Do you care to tell me how long this en- 
gagement has lasted .? ” 

“ Certainly ! — Since last night.” 

“Thank you for telling me that. I think 
I must go back to my work now.” 

She walked slowly away. Amy sat still, 
twirling her bonnet strings and smiling to 
herself. 

This outburst of her new dignity — this ini- 
tial assertion of her womanhood — had come 
almost as unexpectedly to herself as to her 
aunt. She had scarcely known it was in her- 
self to do such a thing. Certain restrictions 
had been chafing her for a long time : she had 
not dreamed that they could so readily be set 


The Choir Invisible 


155 


aside, that she had only to stamp her foot 
violently down on another foot and the other 
foot would be jerked out of the way. In the 
flush of elation, she thought of what had just 
taken place as her Declaration of Indepen ■ 
dence. She kept on celebrating it in a sort of 
intoxication at her own audacity : 

''I have thrown off the yoke of the Old 
Dynasty ! Glory for the thirteen colonies ! A 
Revolution in half an hour! I’m the mother 
of a new country I Washington, salute me ! ” 

Then, with perhaps somewhat the feeling of 
a pullet that has whipped a hen in a barnyard 
and that after an interval will run all the way 
across the barnyard to attack again and see 
whether the victory is complete, she rose and 
went across the garden, bent on trying the 
virtue of a final peck. 

“ But you haven’t congratulated me. Aunt 
Jessica! You have turned your back on the 
bride elect — you with all your fine manners! 
She presents herself once more to your notice : 
the future Mrs. Joseph Holden, Junior, to be 
married one month from last night ! ” And 
unexpectedly standing in front of Mrs. Fal- 
coner, Amy made one of her low bows which 


156 


The Choir Invisible 


she had practised in the minuet. But catching 
sight of the face of her aunt, she cried re- 
morsefully : 

'‘Oh, I have been so rude to you, Aunt 
Jessica ! Forgive me ! ” There was something 
of the new sense of womanhood in her voice 
and of the sisterhood in suffering which woman- 
hood alone can bring. 

But Mrs. Falconer had not heard Amy’s last 
exclamation. 

“ What do you mean } ” she asked with quick 
tremulous eagerness. She had regained her 
firmness of demeanour, which alone should have 
turned back any expression of sympathy before 
it could have been offered. 

“That I am to become Mrs. Joseph Holden 
— a month from last night,” repeated Amy be- 
witchingly. 

“You are serious } ” 

“ I am serious ! ” 

Mrs. Falconer did not take Amy’s word : she 
searched her face and eyes with one swift 
scrutiny that was like a merciless white flame 
of truth, scorching away all sham, all play, 
all unreality. Then she dropped her head 
quickly, so that her own face remained hidden. 


The Choir Invisible 


157 


and silently plied her work. But how the very 
earth about the rake, how the little roots and 
clods, seemed to come to life and leap joyously 
into the air ! All at once she dropped every- 
thing and came over and took Amy’s hand and 
kissed her cheek. Her lovely eyes were glow- 
ing; her face looked as though it had upon it 
the rosy shadow of the peach trees not far 
away. 

do congratulate you,” she said sweetly, 
but with the reserve which Amy’s accession to 
womanhood and the entire conversation of the 
morning made an unalterable barrier to her. 
** You have not needed advice: you have chosen 
wisely. You shall have a beautiful wedding. I 
will make your dress myself. The like of it will 
never have been seen in the wilderness. You 
shall have all the finest linen in the weaving- 
room. Only a month ! How shall we ever 
get ready! — if we stand idling here! Oh, the 
work, the work ! ” she cried and turned to hers 
with a dismissing smile — unable to trust her- 
self to say more. 

“ And I must go and take the things out of my 
bundle, ” cried Amy, catching the contagion of 
all this and bounding away to the house. 


158 


The Choir Invisible 


Some five minutes later Mrs. Falconer glanced 
at the sun: it was eleven o’clock — time to be 
getting dinner. 

When she reached her room, Amy was stand- 
ing beside the bed, engaged in lifting out of 
the bundle the finery now so redolent of the 
ball. 

*^Aunt Jessica,” she remarked carelessly, 
without looking round, “ I forgot to tell you that 
John Gray had a fight with a panther in his 
school-room this morning,” and she gave several 
gossamer-like touches to the white lace tucker. 

Mrs. Falconer had seated herself in a chair to 
rest. She had taken off her bonnet, and her 
fingers were unconsciously busy with the lustrous 
edges of her heavy hair. At Amy’s words her 
hands fell to her lap. But she had long ago 
learned the value of silence and self-control 
when she was most deeply moved : Amy had 
already surprised her once that morning. 

“ The panther bit him in the shoulder close to 
the neck, ” continued Amy, folding the tucker 
away and lifting out the blue silk coat. ‘‘ They 
were on the floor of the school-house in the last 
struggle when Erskine got there. He had gone 
for Phoebe Lovejoy’s cows, because it was rain- 


The Choir Invisible 


159 


ing and she couldn’t go herself ; and he heard 
John as he was passing. He said his voice 
sounded like the bellow of a dying bull.” 

Is he much hurt ? Where is he } Did you 
go to see him } Who dressed his wound ? Who 
is with him } ” 

“They carried him home,” said Amy, turning 
round to the light and pressing the beautiful 
silk coat in against her figure with little kicks 
at the skirt. “No; I didn’t go; Joseph came 
round and told me. He didn’t think the wound 
was very dangerous — necessarily. One of his 
hands was terribly clawed.” 

“A panther.? In town.? In his school- 
room .? ” — 

“You know Erskine keeps a pet panther. I 
heard him tell Mrs. Poythress it was a female,” 
said Amy with an apologetic icy, knowing little 
laugh. “ And he said this one had been prowl- 
ing about in the edge of the canebrakes for 
several days. He had been trying to get a shot 
at it. He says it was nearly starved : that was 
why it wanted to eat John whole before break- 
fast.” 

Amy turned back to the bed and shook out 
delicately the white muslin dress — the dress that 


i6o The Choir Invisible 

John had hung on the wall of his cabin— that 
had wound itself around his figure so cling- 
ingly. 

There was silence in the room. Amy had 
now reached the silk stockings ; and taking up 
one, she blew down into it and quickly peeped 
over the side, to see whether it would fill out to 
life-size — with a mischievous wink. 

I am going to him at once.” 

Amy looked up in amazement. 

“But, Aunt Jessica,” she observed reproach- 
fully ; “ who will get uncle’s dinner ? You know 
I can’t.” 

“Tell your uncle what has happened as soon 
as he comes.” 

She had risen and was making some rapid 
preparations. 

“ I want my dinner,” said Amy ruefully, 
seating herself on the edge of the bed and 
watching her aunt with disapproval. 

“You cant go now ! ” she exclaimed. “ Uncle 
has the horses in the field.” 

Mrs. Falconer turned to her with simple 
earnestness. 

“ I hoped you would lend me your horse ? ” 

“ But he is tired ; and beside I want to use 


The Choir Invisible 


i6i 


him this afternoon : Kitty and I are going vis- 
iting.” 

‘‘Tell your uncle when he comes in,” said 
Mrs. Falconer, turning in the doorway a minute 
later, and speaking rapidly to her niece, but 
without the least reproach, “ tell your uncle that 
his friend is badly hurt. Tell him that we do 
not know how badly. Tell him that I have gone 
to find out and to do anything for him that I 
can. Tell him to follow me at once. He will 
find me at his bedside. I am sorry about the 
dinner.” 

M 


XII 


Several days had slipped by. 

At John’s request they had moved his bed 
across the doorway of his cabin ; and stretched 
there, he could see the sun spring every morn- 
ing out the dimpled emerald ocean of the 
wilderness ; and the moon follow at night, 
silvering the soft ripples of the multitudinous 
leaves lapping the shores of silence : days when 
the inner noises of life sounded like storms ; 
nights when everything within him lay as still 
as memory. 

His wounds had behaved well from the out- 
set. When he had put forth all his frenzied 
despairing strength to throttle the cougar, it had 
let go its hold only to sink its fangs more deeply 
into his flesh, thus increasing the laceration ; 
and there was also much laceration of the hand. 
But the rich blood flowing in him was the 
purest ; and among a people who for a quarter 
of a century had been used to the treatment of 
wounds, there prevailed a rough but genuine 
162 


The Choir Invisible 


163 


skill that stood him in good stead. To these 
hardy fighting folk, as to him, it was a scratch ; 
and he would have liked to go on with his 
teaching. Warned of the danger of inflamma- 
tion, however, he took to his bed ; and accord- 
ing to our own nervous standards which seem 
to have intensified pain for us beyond the com- 
prehension of our forefathers, he was sick and 
a great sufferer. 

Those long cool, sweet, brilliant days ! Those 
long still, lonely, silvery nights! His cabin 
stood near the crest of the hill that ran along 
the southern edge of the settlement ; and 
propped on his bed, he could look down into 
the wide valley — into the town. The frame 
of his door became the frame of many a living 
picture. Under a big shady tree at the creek- 
side, he could see some of his children playing 
or fishing : their shouts and laughter were borne 
to his ear ; he could recognize their shrill voices 
— those always masterful voices of boys at their 
games. Sometimes these little figures were 
framed timidly just outside the door — the girls 
with small wilted posies, the boys with inquiries. 
But there was no disguising the dread they all 
felt that he might soon be well : he had felt it 


164 


The Choir Invisible 


himself once; he did not blame them. Wee 
Jennie even came up with her slate one day and 
asked him to set her a sum in multiplication ; 
he did so ; but he knew that she would rub it 
out as soon as she could get out of sight, and 
he laughed quietly to himself at this tiny casu- 
ist, who was trying so hard to deceive them 
both. 

Two or three times, now out in the sunlight, 
now under the shadow of the trees, he saw 
an old white horse go slowly along the distant 
road ; and a pink skirt and a huge white bon- 
net — two or three times ; but he watched for 
it a thousand times till his eyes grew weary. 

One day Erskine brought the skin of the 
panther which he was preparing for him, to 
take the place of the old one under his table. 
He brought his rifle along also, — his ‘‘Betsy,” 
as he always called it ; which, however, he de- 
clared was bewitched just now ; and for a while 
John watched him curiously as he nailed a tar- 
get on a tree in front of John’s door, drew on 
it the face of the person whom he charged with 
having bewitched his gun, and then, standing 
back, shot it with a silver bullet ; after which, 
the spell being now undone, he dug the bullet 


The Choir Invisible 165 

out of the tree again and went off to hunt with 
confidence in his luck. 

And then the making of history was going 
on under his eyes down there in the town, 
and many a thoughtful hour he studied that. 
The mere procession of figures across his field 
of vision symbolized the march of destiny, the 
onward sweep of the race, the winning of the 
continent. Now the barbaric paint and plumes 
of some proud Indian, peaceably come to trade 
in pelts but really to note the changes that 
had taken place in his great hunting ground, 
loved and ranged of old beyond all others : 
this figure was the Past — the old, old Past. 
Next, the picturesque, rugged outlines of some 
backwoods rifleman, who with his fellows had 
dislodged and pushed the Indian westward : 
this figure was the Present — the short-lived 
Present. Lastly, dislodging this figure in turn 
and already pushing him westward as he had 
driven the Indian, a third type of historic man, 
the fixed settler, the land-loving, house-building, 
wife-bringing, child-getting, stock-breeding yeo- 
man of the new field and pasture : this was the 
figure of the endless Future. The retreating 
wave of Indian life, the thin restless wave of 


The Choir Invisible 


1 66 

frontier life, the on-coming, all-burying wave of 
civilized life — he seemed to feel close to him 
the mighty movements of the three. His own 
affair, the attack of the panther, the last en- 
counter between the cabin and the jungle — 
looked to him as typical of the conquest ; and 
that he should have come out of the struggle 
alive, and have owed his life to the young 
Indian fighter and hunter who had sprung be- 
tween him and the incarnate terror of the wil- 
derness, affected his imagination as an epitome 
of the whole winning of the West. 

One morning while the earth was still fresh 
with dew, the great Boone came to inquire for 
him, and before he left, drew from the pocket 
of his hunting shirt a well-worn little volume. 

‘Ht has been my friend many a night,” he 
said. “ I have read it by many a camp-fire. I 
had it in my pocket when I stood on the top of 
Indian Old Fields and saw the blue grass lands 
for the first time. And when we encamped on 
the creek there, I named it Lulbegrud in honour 
of my book. You can read it while you have 
nothing else to do ; ” and he astounded John by 
leaving in his hand Swift’s story of adventures 
in new worlds. 


The Choir Invisible 


167 


He had many other visitors : the Governor, 
Mr. Bradford, General Wilkinson, the leaders in 
the French movement, all of whom were solici- 
tous for his welfare as a man, but also as their 
chosen emissary to the Jacobin Club of Phila- 
delphia. In truth it seemed to him that every 
one in the town came sooner or later, to take 
a turn at his bedside or wish him well. 

Except four persons : Amy did not come ; 
nor Joseph, with whom he had quarrelled and 
with whom he meant to settle his difference as 
soon as he could get about ; nor O’Bannon, 
whose practical joke had indirectly led to the 
whole trouble ; nor Peter, who toiled on at his 
forge with his wounded vanity. 

Betrothals were not kept secret in those 
days and engagements were short. But as he 
was sick and suffering, some of those who visited 
him forbore to mention her name, much less 
to speak of the preparations now going forward 
for her marriage with Joseph. Others, indeed, 
did begin to talk of her and to pry; but he 
changed the subject quickly. 

And so he lay there with the old battle going 
on in his thoughts, never knowing that she had 
promised to become the wife of another : fight- 


i68 


The Choir Invisible 


ing it all over in his foolish, iron-minded way : 
some days hardening and saying he would 
never look her in the face again ; other days 
softening and resolving to seek her out as 
soon as he grew well enough and learn whether 
the fault of all this quarrel lay with him or 
wherein lay the truth : yet in all his moods sore 
beset with doubts of her sincerity and at all 
times passing sore over his defeat — defeat that 
always went so hard with him. 

Meantime one person was pondering his case 
with a solicitude that he wist not of : the Rev- 
erend James Moore, the flute-playing Episcopal 
parson of the town, within whose flock this 
marriage was to take place and who may have 
regarded Amy as one of his most frisky way- 
ward fleeces. Perhaps indeed as not wearing 
a white spiritual fleece at all but as dyed a 
sort of merino-brown in the matter of right- 
eousness. 

He had long been fond of John — they both 
being pure-minded men, religious, bookish, and 
bachelors ; but their friendship caused one to 
think of the pine and the palm : for the par- 
son, with his cold bleak face, palish straight 
hair put back behind white ears, and frozen 


The Choir Invisible 169 

smile, appeared always to be inhabiting the arc- 
tic regions of life ; while John, though rooted in 
a tropical soil of many passions, strove always 
to bear himself in character like a palm, up- 
right, clean-cut ; having no low or drooping 
branches ; and putting forth all the foliage and 
blossoms of the mind at the very summit of 
his powers. 

The parson and the school-master had often 
walked out to the Falconers’ together in the 
days when John imagined his suit to be faring 
prosperously ; and from Amy’s conduct, and 
his too slight knowledge of the sex, this arctic 
explorer had long since adjusted his frosted 
faculties to the notion that she expected to 
become John’s wife. He was sorry; it sent 
an extra chill through the icebergs of his imagi- 
nation ; but perhaps he gathered comforting 
warmth from the hope that some of John’s 
whiteness would fall upon her and that thus 
from being a blackish lambkin she would at 
least eventually turn into a light-gray ewe. 

When the tidings reached his far-inward 
ear that she was to marry Joseph instead of 
his friend, a general thaw set in over the 
entire landscape of his nature : it was like 


The Choir Invisible 


170 

spring along the southern fringes of Green- 
land. 

The error must not be inculcated here that 
the parson had no passions: he had three — 
ruling ones : a passion for music, a passion for 
metaphysics, and a passion for satirizing the 
other sex. 

Dropping in one afternoon and glancing with 
delicate indirection at John’s short shelf of 
books, he inquired whether he had finished with 
his Paley. John said he had and the parson 
took it down to bear away with him. Laying 
it across his stony knees as he sat down and 
piling his white hands on it, 

“ Do you believe Paley } ” he asked, turning 
upon John a pair of the most beautiful eyes, 
which looked a little like moss agates. 

“I believe St. Paul,” replied John, turning 
his own eyes fondly on his open Testament. 

“ Do you believe Paley ? ” insisted the parson, 
who would always have his questions answered 
directly. 

“ There’s a good deal of Paley : what do you 
mean.?” said John, laughing evasively. 

“I mean his ground idea — the corner stone 
of his doctrine — his poii sto. I mean do you 


The Choir Invisible 


171 


believe that we can infer the existence and char- 
acter of God from any evidences of design that 
we see in the universe ? ” 

‘‘Fm not so sure about that,” said John. 
“What we call the evidences of design in the 
universe may be merely certain laws of our own 
minds, certain inward necessities we are under 
to think of everything as having an order and a 
plan and a cause. And these inner necessities 
may themselves rest on nothing, may be wrong, 
may be deceiving us.” 

“Oh, I don’t mean that!” said the parson. 
“ We’ve got to believe our own minds. We’ve 
got to do that even to disbelieve them. If the 
mind says of itself it is a liar, how does it 
know this to be true if it is a liar itself.? No; 
we have to believe our own minds whether 
they are right or wrong. But what I mean 
is : can we, according to Paley, infer the ex- 
istence and character of God from anything we 
see .? ” 

“It sounds reasonable,” said John. 

“Does it I Then suppose you apply this 
method of reasoning to a woman; can you in- 
fer her existence from anything you see .? Can 
you trace the evidences of design there? Can 


172 


The Choir Invisible 


you derive the slightest notion of her character 
from her works ? ” 

As the parson said this, he turned upon the 
sick man a look of such logical triumph that 
John, who for days had been wearily trying to 
infer Amy’s character from what she had done, 
was seized with a fit of laughter — the parson 
himself remaining perfectly grave. 

Another day he examined John’s wound ten- 
derly, and then sat down by him with his beau- 
tiful moss-agate eyes emitting dangerous little 
sparkles. 

“ It’s a bad bite,” he said, “ the bite of a cat 
— felis concolor. They are a bad family — these 
cats — the scratchers.” He was holding John’s 
wounded hand. “ So you’ve had your fight 
with a felis. A single encounter ought to be 
enough ! If some one hadn’t happened to step 
in and save you ! — What do you suppose is 
the root of the idea universal in the conscious- 
ness of our race that if a man had not been a 
man he’d have been a lion ; and that if a woman 
hadn’t been a woman she’d have been a tigress 

“ I don’t believe there’s any such idea uni- 
versal in the consciousness of the race,” replied 
John, laughing. 


The Choir Invisible 


173 


*‘It’s universal in my consciousness,” said 
the parson doggedly, and my consciousness 
is as valid as any other man’s. But I’ll ask 
you an easier question : who of all men, do 
you suppose, knew most about women 

‘‘ Women or Woman ? ” inquired John. 

“Women,” said the parson. “We’ll drop 
the subject of Woman : she’s beyond us ! ” 

“ I don’t know,” observed John. “ St. Paul 
knew a good deal, and said some necessary 
things.” 

“ St. Paul ! ” exclaimed the parson conde- 
scendingly. “ He knew a few noble Jewesses — 
superficially — with a scattering acquaintance 
among the pagan sisters around the shores of 
the Mediterranean. As for what he wrote on 
that subject — it may have been inspired by 
Heaven: it never could have been inspired by 
the sex.” 

“Shakspeare, I suppose,” said John. 

“ The man in the Arabian Nights,” cried the 
parson, who may have been put in mind of this 
character by his own attempts to furnish daily 
entertainment. “ He knew a thousand of them 
— intimately. And cut off the heads of nine 
hundred and ninety-nine ! The only reason he 


174 


The Choir Invisible 


did not cut off the head of the other was that 
he had learned enough : he could not endure to 
know any more. All the evidence had come in : 
the case was closed.” 

“I suppose there are men in the world,” 
he continued, ‘‘ who would find it hard to stand 
a single disappointment about a woman. But 
think of a thousand disappointments ! A thou- 
sand attempts to find a good wife — just one 
woman who could furnish a man a little ra- 
tional companionship at night. Bluebeard also 
must have been a well-informed person. And 
Henry the Eighth — there was a man who had 
evidently picked up considerable knowledge 
and who made considerable use of it. But to 
go back a moment to the idea of the felis 
family. Suppose we do this : we’ll begin to 
enumerate the qualities of the common house 
cat. I’ll think of the cat ; you think of some 
woman ; and we’ll see what we come to.” 

“I’ll not do it,” said John. “She’s too 
noble.” 

“Just for fun!” 

“There’s no fun in comparing a woman to 
a cat.” 

“There is if she doesn’t know it. Come, 


The Choir Invisible 


175 


begin ! ” And the parson laid one long fore- 
finger on one long little finger and waited for 
the first specification. 

Fineness,” said John, thinking of a certain 
woman. 

Fondness for a nap,” said the parson, think- 
ing of a certain cat. 

“ Grace,” said John. 

“Inability to express thanks,” said the parson. 

“A beautiful form,” said John. 

“ A desire to be stroked,” said the parson. 

“Sympathy,” said John. 

“Oh, no ! ” said the parson ; “no cat has any 
sympathy. A dog has : a man is more of a dog.” 

“Noble-mindedness,” said John. 

“That will not do either,” said the parson. 
“Cats are not noble-minded; it’s preposterous!” 

“ Perfect ease of manner,” said John. 

“Perfect indifference of manner,” said the 
parson. 

“ No vanity,” said John. 

“No sense of humour,” said the parson. 

“Plenty of wit,” said John. 

“You keep on thinking too much about some 
woman,” remonstrated the parson, slightly ex- 
asperated. 


176 


The Choir Invisible 


** Fastidiousness,” said John. 

“Soft hands and beautiful nails,” said the 
parson, nodding encouragingly. 

“A gentle footstep,” said John with a soft- 
ened look coming into his eyes. “A quiet 
presence.” 

“ A quiet pounce on you unawares,” said the 
parson. 

“Beautiful taste in music,” said John. 

“Oh! dreadful!” said the parson. “What 
on earth are you thinking about } ” 

“The love of rugs and cushions,” said John, 
groping desperately. 

“ The love of a lap,” said the parson fluently. 

“The love of playing with its victim,” said 
John, thinking of another woman. 

“ Capital ! ” cried the parson. “ That’s the 
truest thing we’ve said. We’ll not spoil it by 
another word;” but he searched John’s face 
covertly to see whether this talk had beguiled 
him. 

All this satire meant nothing sour, or bitter, 
or ignoble with the parson. It was merely the 
low, far-off play of the northern lights of his 
mind, irradiating the long polar night of his 


The Choir Invisible 


177 


bachelorhood. But even on the polar night the 
sun rises — a little way ; and the time came 
when he married — as one might expect to find 
the flame of a volcano hidden away in a moun- 
tain of Iceland spar. 

Toward the end of his illness, John lay one 
night just inside his door, looking soberly, sor- 
rowfully out into the moonlight. A chair sat 
outside, and the parson walked quietly up the 
green hill and took it. Then he laid his hat 
on the grass ; and passed his delicate hands 
slowly backward over his long fine straight 
hair, on which the moonbeams at once fell with 
a lustre as upon still water or the finest satin. 

They talked awhile of the best things in life, 
as they commonly did. At length the parson 
said in his unworldly way : 

** I have one thing against Aristotle : he said 
the effect of the flute was bad and exciting. 
He was no true Greek. John, have you ever 
thought how much of life can be expressed in 
terms of music } To me every civilization has 
given out its distinct musical quality ; the ages 
have their peculiar tones ; each century its key, 
its scale. For generations in Greece you can 

N 


The Choir Invisible 


178 

hear nothing but the pipes ; during other gen- 
erations nothing but the lyre. Think of the 
long, long time among the Romans when your 
ear is reached by the trumpet alone. 

‘‘Then again whole events in history come 
down to me with the effect of an orchestra, 
playing in the distance ; single lives sometimes 
like a great solo. As for the people I know or 
have known, some have to me the sound of 
brass, some the sound of wood, some the sound 
of strings. Only — so few, so very, very few 
yield the perfect music of their kind. The brass 
is a little too loud ; the wood a little too muffled ; 
the strings — some of the strings are invariably 
broken. I know a big man who is nothing but 
a big drum ; and I know another whose whole 
existence has been a jig on a fiddle ; and I 
know a shrill little fellow who is a fife ; and I 
know a brassy girl who is a pair of cymbals ; 
and once — onceC repeated the parson whim- 
sically, “ I knew an old maid who was a real 
living spinet. I even know another old maid 
now who is nothing but an old music book — 
long ago sung through, learned by heart, and 
laid aside: in a faded, wrinkled binding — yel- 
lowed paper stained by tears — and haunted by 


The Choir Invisible 


179 


an odour of rose-petals, crushed between the 
leaves of memory: a genuine very thin and 
stiff collection of the rarest original songs — 
not songs without words, but songs without 
sounds — the ballads of an undiscovered heart, 
the hymns of an unanswered spirit.” 

After a pause during which neither of the 
men spoke, the parson went on : 

All Ireland — it is a harp ! We know what 
Scotland is. John,” he exclaimed, suddenly 
turning toward the dark figure lying just inside 
the shadow, ‘‘you are a discord of the bagpipe 
and the harp : there’s the trouble with you. 
Sometimes I can hear the harp alone in you, 
and then I like you ; but when the bagpipe 
begins, you are worse than a big bumble-bee 
with a bad cold.” 

“I know it,” said John sorrowfully. “My 
only hope is that the harp will outlast the 
bee.” 

“At least that was a chord finely struck,” 
said the parson warmly. After another silence 
he went on. 

“Martin Luther — he was a cathedral organ. 
And so it goes. And so the whole past sounds 
to me : it is the music of the world : it is the 


i8o The Choir Invisible 

vast choir of the ever-living dead.” He gazed 
dreamily up at the heavens : “ Plato ! he is the 
music of the stars.” 

After a little while, bending over and looking 
at the earth and speaking in a tone of uncon- 
scious humility, he added : 

“ The most that we can do is to begin a strain 
that will swell the general volume and last on 
after we have perished. As for me, when I am 
gone, I should like the memory of my life to 
give out the sound of a flute.” 

He slipped his hand softly into the breast- 
pocket of his coat and more softly drew some- 
thing out. 

** Would you like a little music?” he asked 
shyly, his cold beautiful face all at once taking 
on an expression of angelic sweetness. 

John quickly reached out and caught his hand 
in a long, crushing grip : he knew this was the 
last proof the parson could ever have given him 
that he loved him. And then as he lay back 
on his pillow, he turned his face back into the 
dark cabin. 

Out upon the stillness of the night floated 
the parson’s passion — silver-clear, but in an un- 
dertone of such peace, of such immortal gen- 


The Choir Invisible i8i 

tleness. It was as though the very beams of 
the far-off serenest moon, falling upon his flute 
and dropping down into its interior through its 
little round openings, were by his touch shorn 
of all their lustre, their softness, their celestial 
energy, and made to reissue as music. It was as 
though his flute had been stuffed with frozen 
Alpine blossoms and these had been melted 
away by the passionate breath of his soul into 
the coldest invisible flowers of sound. 

At last, as though all these blossoms in his 
flute had been used up — blown out upon the 
warm, moon-lit air as the snow-white fragrances 
of the ear — the parson buried his face softly 
upon his elbow which rested on the back of his 
chair. 

And neither man spoke again. 


XIII 


When Mrs. Falconer had drawn near John’s 
hut on the morning of his misfortune, it was 
past noon despite all her anxious, sorrowful 
haste to reach him. His wounds had been 
dressed. The crowd of people that had gath- 
ered about his cabin were gone back to their 
occupations or their homes — except a group 
that sat on the roots of a green tree several 
yards from his door. Some of these were old 
wilderness folk living near by who had offered 
to nurse him and otherwise to care for his com- 
forts and needs. The affair furnished them 
that renewed interest in themselves which is 
so liable to revisit us when we have escaped a 
fellow-creature’s suffering but can relate good 
things about ourselves in like risks and dangers ; 
and they were drawing out their reminiscences 
now with unconscious gratitude for so excellent 
an opportunity befalling them in these peaceful 
unadventurous days. Several of John’s boys 
182 


The Choir Invisible 183 

lay in the grass and hung upon these narra- 
tives. Now and then they cast awe-stricken 
glances at his door which had been pushed to, 
that he might be quiet ; or, if his pain would let 
him, drop into a little sleep. They made it 
their especial care, when any new-comer hur- 
ried past, to arrest him with the command that 
he must not go in; and they would thus have 
stopped Mrs. Falconer but she put them gently 
aside without heed or hearing. 

When she softly pushed the door open, John 
was not asleep. He lay in a corner on his low 
hard bed of skins against the wall of logs — 
his eyes wide open, the hard white glare of the 
small shutterless window falling on his face. 
He turned to her the look of a dumb animal 
that can say nothing of why it has been 
wounded or of how it is suffering; stretched 
out his hand gratefully; and drew her toward 
him. She sat down on the edge of the bed, 
folded her quivering fingers across his temples, 
smoothed back his heavy, coarse, curling hair, 
and bending low over his eyes, rained down 
into them the whole unuttered, tearless passion 
of her distress, her sympathy. 

Major Falconer came for her within the hour 


The Choir Invisible 


184 

and she left with him almost as soon as he 
arrived. 

When she was gone, John lay thinking of her. 

“ What a nurse she is ! ” he said, remember- 
ing how she had concerned herself solely about 
his life, his safety, his wounds. Once she had 
turned quickly : 

“ Now you can’t go away ! ” she had said 
with a smile that touched him deeply. 

“ I wish you didn’t have to go ! ” he had 
replied mournfully, feeling his sudden depend- 
ence on her. 

This was the first time she had ever been 
in his room — with its poverty, its bareness. 
She must have cast about it a look of delicate 
inquiry — as a woman is apt to do in a single- 
man’s abode ; for when she came again, in ad- 
dition to pieces of soft old linen for bandages 
she brought fresh cool fragrant sheets — the 
work of her own looms ; a better pillow with a 
pillow-case on it that was delicious to his 
cheek; for he had his weakness about clean, 
white linen. She put a curtain over the pitiless 
window. He saw a wild rose in a glass beside 
his Testament. He discovered moccasin slip- 
pers beside his bed. 


The Choir Invisible 


185 

‘‘And here,” she had said just before leav- 
ing, with her hand on a pile of things and 
with an embarrassed laugh — keeping her face 
turned away — “here are some towels.” 

Under the towels he found two night shirts — 
new ones. 

When she was gone, he lay thinking of her 
again. 

He had gratefully slipped on one of the 
shirts. He was feeling the new sense of lux- 
ury that is imparted by a bed enriched with 
snow-white, sweet-smelling pillows and sheets. 
The curtain over his window strained into his 
room a light shadowy, restful. The flower 
on his table, — the transforming touch in his 
room — her noble brooding tenderness — every- 
thing went into his gratitude, his remembrance 
of her. But all this — he argued with a sud- 
den taste for fine discrimination — had not been 
done out of mere anxiety for his life: it was 
not the barren solicitude of a nurse but the 
deliberate, luxurious regard of a mother for 
his comfort: no doubt it represented the un- 
governable overflow of the maternal, long 
pent-up in her ungratified. And by this route 
he came at last to a thought of her that was 


The Choir Invisible 


1 86 

novel for him — the pitying recollection of 
her childlessness. 

“ What a mother she would have been!” he 
'said rebelliously. “ The mother of sons who 
would have become great through her — and 
greater through the memory of her after she 
was gone.” 

When she came again, seeing him out of 
danger and seeing him comfortable, she seated 
herself beside his table and opened her work. 

“ It isn’t good for you to talk much,” she soon 
said reprovingly, “ and I have to work — and to 
think.” 

And so he lay watching her — watching her 
beautiful fingers which never seemed to rest in 
life — watching her quiet brow with its ripple of 
lustrous hair forever suggesting to him how her 
lovely neck and shoulders would be buried by 
it, if its long light waves were but loosened. 
To have a woman sitting by his table with her 
sewing — it turned his room into something 
vaguely dreamed of heretofore : a home. She 
finished a sock for Major Falconer and began 
on one of his shirts. He counted the stitches 
as they went into a sleeve. They made him 
angry. And her face ! — over it had come a look 


The Choir Invisible 


187 


of settled weariness; for perhaps if there is 
ever a time when a woman forgets herself and 
the inward sorrow steals outward to the surface 
as an unwatched shadow along a wall, it is when 
she sews. 

“ What a wife she is ! ” he reflected enviously 
after she was gone; and he tried not to think of 
certain matters in her life. “What a wife! 
How unfaltering in duty I ” 

The next time she came, it was early. She 
seemed to him to have bathed in the freshness, 
the beauty, the delight of the morning. He 
had never seen her so radiant, so young. She 
was like a woman who holds in her hand the 
unopened casket of life — its jewels still un- 
gazed on, still unworn. There was some secret 
excitement in her as though the moment had 
at last come for her to open it. She had but 
a few moments to spare. 

“ I have brought you a book,” she said, smil- 
ing and laying her cheek against a rose newly 
placed by his Testament. For a moment she 
scrutinized him with intense penetration. Then 
she added : 

“ Will you read it wisely ? ” 

“ I will if I am wise,” he replied laughing. 


The Choir Invisible 


1 88 

“ Thank you,” and he held out his hand for the 
book eagerly. 

She clasped it more tightly with the gayest 
laugh of irresolution. Her colour deepened. A 
moment later, however, she recovered the simple 
and noble seriousness to which she had grown 
used as the one habit of her life with him. 

“ You should have read it long ago,” she said. 
“ But it is not too late for you. Perhaps now is 
your best time. It is a good book for a man, 
wounded as you have been ; and by the time you 
are well, you will need it more than you have 
ever done. Hereafter you will always need it 
more.” 

She spoke with partly hidden significance, as 
one who knows life may speak to one who does 
not. 

He eyed the book despairingly. 

“ It is my old Bible of manhood,” she con- 
tinued with rich soberness, “ part worthless, 
part divine. Not Greek manhood — nor Roman 
manhood : they were too pagan. Not Semitic 
manhood : that — in its ideal at least — was not 
pagan enough. But something better than any 
of these — something that is everything.” 

The subject struck inward to the very heart’s 


The Choir Invisible 189 

root of his private life. He listened as with 
breath arrested. 

“We know what the Greeks were before 
everything else,” she said resolutely: “ they were 
physical men : we think less of them spiritually 
in any sense of the idea that is valued by us : 
and of course we do not think of them at 
all as gentlemen : that involves of course the 
highest courtesy to women. The Jews were of 
all things spiritual in the type of their striving. 
Their ancient system, and the system of the 
New Testament itself as it was soon taught and 
passed down to us, struck a deadly blow at the 
development of the body for its own sake — at 
physical beauty: and the highest development 
of the body is what the race can never do 
without. It struck another blow at the devel- 
opment of taste — at the luxury and grace of 
the intellect : which also the race can never do 
without. But in this old book you will find the 
starting-point of a new conception of ideal human 
life. It grew partly out of the pagan; it grew 
partly out of the Christian; it added from its 
own age something of its own. Nearly every 
nation of Europe has lived on it ever since — as 
its ideal. The whole world is being nourished 


190 


The Choir Invisible 


by that ideal more and more. It is the only 
conception of itself that the race can never 
fall away from without harm, because it is the 
ideal of its own perfection. You know what I 
mean .? ” she asked a little imperiously as though 
she were talking to a green boy. 

“What do you mean.?” he asked wonder- 
ingly. She had never spoken to him in this 
way. Her mood, the passionate, beautiful, em- 
barrassed stress behind all this, was a bewilder- 
ing revelation. 

“ I mean,” she said, “ that first of all things 
in this world a man must be a man — with all 
the grace and vigour and, if possible, all the 
beauty of the body. Then he must be a gentle- 
man — with all the grace, the vigour, the good 
taste of the mind. And then with both of 
these — no matter what his creed, his dogmas, 
his superstitions, his religion — with both of 
these he must try to live a beautiful life of 
the spirit.” 

He looked at her eagerly, gratefully. 

“You will find him all these,” she resumed, 
dropping her eyes before his gratitude which 
was much too personal. “ You will find all these 
in this book : here are men who were men ; here 


The Choir Invisible 


191 

are men who were gentlemen ; and here are 
gentlemen who served the unfallen life of the 
spirit.” 

She kept her eyes on the book. Her voice 
had become very grave and reverent. She had 
grown more embarrassed, but at last she went 
on as though resolved to finish : 

“ So it ought to help you ! It will help you. 
It will help you to be what you are trying to be. 
There are things here that you have sought and 
have never found. There are characters here 
whom you have wished to meet without ever 
having known that they existed. If you will 
always live by what is best in this book, love 
the best that it loves, hate what it hates, scorn 
what it scorns, follow its ideals to the end of 
the world, to the end of your life — ” 

“ Oh, but give it to me ! ” he cried, lifting 
himself impulsively on one elbow and holding 
out his hand for it. 

She came silently over to the bedside and 
placed it on his hand. He studied the title 
wonderingly, wonderingly turned some of the 
leaves, and at last, smiling with wonder still, 
looked up at her. And then he forgot the book 
— forgot everything but her. 


192 


The Choir Invisible 


Once upon a time he had been walking along 
a woodland path with his eyes fixed on the 
ground in front of him as was his studious 
wont In the path itself there had not been 
one thing to catch his notice : only brown dust 
— little stones — a twig — some blades of with- 
ered grass. 

Then all at once out of this dull, dead motley 
of harmonious nothingness, a single gorgeous 
spot had revealed itself, swelled out, and disap- 
peared : a butterfly had opened its wings, laid 
bare their inside splendours, and closed them 
again — presenting to the eye only the adaptive, 
protective, exterior of those marvellous swinging 
doors of its life. He had wondered then that 
Nature could so paint the two sides of this thin- 
nest of all canvases : the outside merely daubed 
over that it might resemble the dead and com- 
mon and worthless things amid which the creat- 
ure had to live — a masterwork of concealment ; 
the inside designed and drawn and coloured with 
lavish fulness of plan, grace of curve, marvel of 
hue — all for the purpose of the exquisite self- 
revelation which should come when the one 
great invitation of existence was sought or was 
given. 


The Choir Invisible 


193 


As the young school-master now looked up — 
too quickly — at the woman who stood over 
him, her eyes were like a butterfly’s gorgeous 
wings that for an instant had opened upon him 
and already were closing — closing upon the 
hidden splendours of her nature — closing upon 
the power to receive upon walls of beauty all 
the sunlight of the world. 

“What a woman!” he said to himself, 
strangely troubled a moment later when she 
was gone. He had not looked at the book 
again. It lay forgotten by his pillow. 

“ What a woman ! ” he repeated, with a sigh 
that was like a groan. 

Her bringing of the book — her unusual com 
versation — her excitement — her seriousness — 
the impression she made upon him that a new 
problem was beginning to work itself out in her 
life — most of all that one startling revelation 
of herself at the instant of turning away : all 
these occupied his thoughts that day. 

She did not return the next or the next or 
the next. And, it was during these long vacant 
hours that he began to weave curiously together 
all that he had ever heard of her and of her 
past; until, in the end, he accomplished some- 


o 


194 


The Choir Invisible 


thing like a true restoration of her life — in the 
colour of his own emotions. Then he fell to 
wandering up and down this long vista of 
scenes as he might have sought unwearied a 
secret gallery of pictures through which he 
alone had the privilege of walking. 

At the far end of the vista he could behold 
her in her childhood as the daughter of a cava- 
lier land-holder in the valley of the James : an 
heiress of a vast estate with its winding creeks 
and sunny bays, its tobacco plantations worked 
by troops of slaves, its deer parks and open 
country for the riding to hounds. There was the 
manor-house in the style of the grand places of 
the English gentry from whom her father was 
descended ; sloping from the veranda to the 
river landing a wide lawn covered with the sil- 
very grass of the English parks, its walks bor- 
dered with hedges of box, its summer-house 
festooned with vines, its terraces gay with the 
old familiar shrubs and flowers loyally brought 
over from the mother land. He could see her 
as, some bright summer morning, followed by a 
tame fawn, she bounded down the lawn to the 
private landing where a slow frigate had stopped 


The Choir Invisible 


195 


to break bulk on its way to Williamsburg — 
perhaps to put out with other furniture a little 
mahogany chair brought especially for herself 
over the rocking sea from London ; or where 
some round-sterned packet from New England 
or New Amsterdam was unloading its cargo of 
grain or hides or rum in exchange for her 
father’s tobacco. Perhaps to greet her father 
himself returning from a long absence amid old 
scenes that still could draw him back to Eng- 
land ; or standing lonely on the pier, to watch 
in tears him and her brothers — a vanishing 
group — as they waved her a last good-bye and 
drifted slowly out to the blue ocean on their 
way home ” to school at Eton. 

He liked to dwell on the picture of her as a 
little school-girl herself : sent fastidiously on her 
way, with long gloves covering her arms, a 
white linen mask tied over her face to screen 
her complexion from tan, a sunbonnet sewed 
tightly on her head to keep it secure from the 
capricious winds of heaven and the more varia- 
ble gusts of her own wilfulness ; or on another 
picture of her — as a lonely little lass — beg- 
ging to be taken to court, where she could 
marvel at her father, an awful judge in his wig 


196 


The Choir Invisible 


and his robe of scarlet and black velvet ; or on 
a third picture of her — as when she was mar- 
shalled into church behind a liveried servant 
bearing the family prayer-book, sat in the raised 
pew upholstered in purple velvet, with its canopy 
overhead and the gilt letters of the family name 
in front ; and a little farther away on the wall 
of the church the Lord’s Prayer and the Com- 
mandments put there by her father at the cost 
of two thousand pounds of his best tobacco ; 
finally to be preached to by a minister with 
whom her father sometimes spilt wine on the 
table-cloth, and who had once fought a success- 
ful duel behind his own sanctuary of peace and 
good will to all men. Here succeeded other 
scenes ; for as his interest deepened, he never 
grew tired of this restorative image-building by 
which she could be brought always more vividly 
before his imagination. 

Her childhood gone, then, he followed her 
as she glided along the shining creeks from 
plantation to plantation in a canoe manned by 
singing black oarsmen ; or rode abroad followed 
by her greyhound, her face concealed by a black 
velvet riding-mask kept in place by a silver 
mouth-piece held between her teeth ; or when 


The Choir Invisible 


197 


autumn waned, went rolling slowly along towards 
Williamsburg or Annapolis in the great family 
coach of mahogany, with its yellow facings, 
Venetian windows, projecting lamps, and high 
seat for footmen and coachman — there to take 
a house for the winter season — there to give 
and to be given balls, where she trod the min- 
uet, stiff in blue brocade, her white shoulders 
rising out of a bodice hung with gems, her 
beautiful head bearing aloft its tower of long 
white feathers. 

Yet with most of her life passed at the great 
lonely country-house by the bright river : gaz- 
ing wistfully out of the deep-mullioned win- 
dows of diamond panes ; flitting up and down 
the wide staircase of carven oak ; buried in its 
library, with its wainscoted walls crossed with 
swords and hung with portraits of soldierly 
faces : all of which pleased him best, he being 
a home-lover. So that when facts were lack- 
ing, sometimes he would kindle true fancies 
of her young life in this place : as when she 
reclined on mats and cushions in the breeze- 
swept halls, fanned by a slave and reading the 
Taller or the Spectator ; or if it were the chill 
twilights of October, perhaps came in from a 


198 


The Choir Invisible 


walk in the cool woods with a red leaf at her 
white throat, and seated herself at the spinet, 
while a low blaze from the deep chimney seat 
flickered over her face, and the low music flick- 
ered with the shadows ; or when the white tem- 
pests of winter raged outside, gave her nights 
to the reading of “Tom Jones,” by the light 
of myrtleberry candles on a slender-legged ma- 
hogany table. 

But he had heard a great deal of her visits at 
the other great country places of the day. 
Often at Greenway Court, where her father 
went to ride to hounds with Lord Fairfax and 
Washington ; at Carter’s Grove ; at the homes 
of the Berkeleys, the Masons, the Spotts- 
woods ; once, indeed, at Castlewood itself, 
where the stately Madam Esmond Warrington 
had placed her by her own side at dinner and 
had kissed her cheek at leaving ; but oftenest 
at Brandon Mansion where one of her heroines 
had lived — Evelyn Byrd ; so that. Sir Godfrey 
Kneller having painted that sad young lady, 
who now lies with a heavy stone on her 
heavier heart in the dim old burying-ground 
at Westover, she would have it that hers must 
be painted in the same identical fashion, with 


The Choir Invisible 


199 


herself sitting on a green bank, a cluster of roses 
in her hand, a shepherd’s crook across her knees. 

And then, just as she was fairly opening 
into the earliest flower of womanhood, the 
sudden, awful end of all this half-barbaric, 
half-aristocratic life — the revolt of the colo- 
nies, the outbreak of the Revolution, the blaze 
of war that swept the land like a forest fire, 
and that enveloped in its furies even the great 
house on the James. One of her brothers 
turned Whig, and already gone impetuously 
away in his uniform of buff and blue, to follow 
the fortunes of Washington ; the other siding 
with the ^^home” across the sea, and he too 
already ridden impetuously away in scarlet. 
Her proud father, his heart long torn between 
these two and between his two countries, pac- 
ing the great hall, his face flushed with wine, 
his eyes turning confusedly, pitifully, on the 
soldierly portraits of his ancestors ; until at last 
he too was gone, to keep his sword and his con- 
science loyal to his king. 

And then more dreadful years and still sadder 
times ; as when one dark morning toward day- 
break, by the edge of a darker forest draped 
with snow where the frozen dead lay thick, they 


200 


The Choir Invisible 


found an officer’s hat half filled with snow, and 
near by, her father fallen face downward ; and 
turning him over, saw a bullet-hole over his 
breast, and the crimson of his blood on the 
scarlet of his waistcoat ; so departed, with man- 
fulness out of this world and leaving behind 
him some finer things than his debts and mort- 
gages over dice and cards and dogs and wine 
and lotteries. Then not long after that, the 
manor-house on the James turned into the un- 
kindest of battle-fields ; one brother defending 
at the head of troops within, the other attack- 
ing at the head of troops without ; the snowy 
bedrooms becoming the red-stained wards of 
a hospital ; the staircase hacked by swords ; 
the poor little spinet and the slender-legged 
little mahogany tables overturned and smashed, 
the portraits slashed, the library scattered. 
Then one night, seen from a distance, a vast 
flame licking the low clouds ; and afterwards 
a black ruin where the great house had stood, 
and so the end of it all forever. 

During these years, she, herself, had been like 
a lily in a lake, never uprooted, but buried out 
of sight beneath the storm that tosses the 
waves back and forth. 


The Choir Invisible 


201 


Then white and heavenly Peace again, and 
the liberty of the Anglo-Saxon race in the New 
World. But with wounds harder to heal than 
those of the flesh ; with memories that were as 
sword-points broken off in the body ; with glory 
to brighten more and more, as time went on, 
but with starvation close at hand. Virginia 
willing to pay her heroes but having naught 
wherewith to pay, until the news comes from 
afar, that while all this has been going on in 
the East, in the West the rude border-folk, the 
backwoodsmen of the Blue Ridge and the 
Alleghanies, without generals, without com- 
mands, without help or pay, or reward of any 
kind, but fighting of their own free will and 
dyeing every step of their advance with their 
blood, had entered and conquered the great 
neutral game-park of the Northern and the 
Southern Indians, and were holding it against 
all plots : in the teeth of all comers and against 
the frantic Indians themselves ; against Eng- 
land, France, Spain, — a new land as good 
as the best of old England — Kentucky ! Into 
which already thousands upon thousands were 
hurrying in search of homes — a new move- 
ment of the race — its first spreading-out 


202 


The Choir Invisible 


over the mighty continent upon its mightier 
destiny. 

So had come about her hasty marriage with 
her young officer, whom Virginia rewarded for 
his service with land ; so had followed the 
breaking of all ties, to journey by his side into 
the wilderness, there to undergo hardship, per- 
haps death itself after captivity and torture such 
that no man who has ever loved a woman can 
even look another man in the face and name. 

Thus ever on and on unwittingly he wove 
the fibres of her life about him as his shirt of 
destiny : following the threads nearer, always 
nearer, toward the present, until he reached the 
day on which he had first met her on his arrival 
in the wilderness. From that time, he no 
longer relied upon hearsay, but drew from his 
own knowledge of her to fill out and so far 
to end all these fond tapestries of his memory 
and imagination. 

But as one who has traversed a long gallery 
of pictures, and, turning to look back upon all 
that he has passed, sees a straight track narrow- 
ing away into the dimming distance, and only 
the last few life scenes standing out lustrous 


The Choir htvisible 


203 


and clear, so the school-master, gazing down 
this long vista, beheld at the far end of it a 
little girl, whom he did not know, playing on 
the silvery ancestral lawns of the James; at the 
near end, watching by his bedside on this rude 
border of the West, a woman who had become 
indispensable to his friendship. 

More days passed, and still she did not re- 
turn. His eagerness for her rose and followed, 
and sorrowfully set with every sun. 

Meantime he read the book, beginning it 
with an effort through finding it hard to with- 
draw his mind from his present. But soon he 
was clutching it with a forgotten hand and 
lay on his bed for hours joined fast to it with 
unreleasing eyes; draining its last words into 
his heart, with a thirst newly begotten and 
growing always the more quenchless as it was 
always being quenched. So that having fin- 
ished it, he read it again, now seeing the high 
end of it all from the low beginning. And then 
a third time, more clingingly, more yearningly 
yet, thrice lighting the fire in his blood with 
the same straw. Like a vital fire it was left in 
him at last, a fire of red and of white flame ; the 
two flames forever hostile, and seeking each to 


204 


The Choir Invisible 


burn the other out. And while it stayed in him 
thus as a fire, it had also filled all tissues of his 
being as water fills a sponge — not dead water 
a dead sponge — ’but as a living sap runs 
through the living sponges of a young oak on 
the edge of its summer. So that never should 
he be able to forget it ; never henceforth be the 
same in knowledge or heart or conscience ; and 
nevermore was the lone spiritual battle of his 
life, if haply waged at all, to be fought out by 
him with the earlier, simpler weapons of his 
innocence and his youth, but with all the might 
of a tempted man’s high faith in the beauty 
and the right and the divine supremacy of 
goodness. 

One morning his wounds had begun to re- 
quire attention. No one had yet come to him : 
it was hardly the customary hour: and more- 
over, by rising in bed he could see that some- 
thing unusual had drawn the people into the 
streets. The news of a massacre on the west- 
ern frontier, perhaps; the arrival of the post- 
rider with angry despatches from the East ; or 
the torch of revolution thrown far northward 
from New Orleans. His face had flushed with 


The Choir Invisible 


205 


feverish waiting and he lay with his eyes turned 
restlessly toward the door. 

It was Mrs. Falconer who stepped forward to 
it with hesitation. But as soon as she caught 
sight of him, she hurried to the bed. 

What is the trouble } Have you been 
worse } ” 

Oh, nothing ! It is nothing.” 

“Why do you say that — to me.?” 

“ My shoulder. But it is hardly time for 
them to come yet.” 

She hesitated and her face showed how 
serious her struggle was. 

“ Let meC she said firmly. 

He looked up quickly, confusedly, at her 
with a refusal on his lips ; but she had already 
turned away to get the needful things in readi- 
ness, and he suffered her, if for no other reason 
than to avoid letting her see the painful rush 
of blood to his face. As she moved about the 
room, she spoke only to ask unavoidable ques- 
tions ; he, only to answer them ; and neither 
looked at the other. 

Then he sat up in the bed and bared his 
neck and shoulder, one arm and half his chest ; 
and with his face crimson, turned his eyes away. 


206 


The Choir Invisible 


She had been among the women in the fort 
during that summer thirteen years before, when 
the battle of the Blue Licks had been fought; 
and speaking in the quietest, most natural of 
voices, she now began to describe how the 
wounded had straggled in from the battle-field ; 
one rifleman reeling on his horse and held in his 
seat by the arm of a comrade, his bleeding, band- 
aged head on that comrade’s shoulder ; another 
borne on a litter swung between two horses ; 
others — footmen — holding out just long enough 
to come into sight of the fort, there to sink down ; 
one, a mere youth, fallen a mile back in the hot 
dusty buffalo trace with an unspoken message 
to some one in his brave, beautiful, darkening 
eyes. But before this, she told him how the 
women had watched all that night and the day 
previous inside the poor little earth-mound of a 
defence against artillery, built by order of 
Jefferson and costing $37.50; the women tak- 
ing as always the places of the men who were 
gone away to the war; becoming as always 
the defenders of the land, of the children, 
of those left behind sick or too old to fight. 
How from the black edge of dawn they had 
strained their eyes in the direction of the bat- 


The Choir Invisible 


207 


tie until at last a woman’s cry of agony had 
rent the air as the first of the wounded had 
ridden slowly into sight. How they had rushed 
forth through the wooden gates and heard the 
tidings of it all and then had followed the 
scenes and the things that could never be told 
for pity and grief and love and sadness. 

After a little pause she began to speak 
of Major Falconer as the school-master had 
never known her to speak ; tremulously of his 
part in that battle, a Revolutionary officer serv- 
ing as a common backwoods soldier; eloquently 
of his perfect courage then and always, of his 
perfect manliness ; and she ended by saying 
that the worst thing that could ever befall a 
woman was to marry an unmanly man. 

“ If any one single thing in life could ever 
have killed me,” she said, “ it would have been 
that.” 

With her last words she finished the dressing 
of his wounds. Spots of the deepest rose were 
on her cheeks ; her eyes were lighted with 
proud fire. Confusedly he thanked her and, 
lying back on his pillow, closed his eyes and 
turned his face away. 

When she had quickly gone he sat up in the 


20S 


The Choir Invisible 


bed again. He drew the book guiltily from 
under his pillow, looked long and sorrowfully at 
it, and then with a low cry of shame — the first 
that had ever burst from his lips — he hurled 
it across the room and threw himself violently 
down again, with his forehead against the logs, 
his eyes hidden, his face burning. 


XIV 


The first day that John felt strong enough 
to walk as far as that end of the town, he was 
pulling himself unsteadily past the shop when 
he saw Peter and turned in to rest and chat. 

The young blacksmith refused to speak to 
him. 

“ Peter ! ” said John with a sad, shaky voice, 
holding out his hand, “ have I changed so 
much? Don’t you know me?” 

“Yes; I know you,” said Peter. “I wish I 
didn’t.” 

“ I don’t think I recognize you any more,” 
replied John, after a moment of silence, 
“What’s the matter?” 

“ Oh, you get along,” said Peter. “ Clear 
out ! ” 

John went inside and drank a gourd of water 
out of Peter’s cool bucket, came back with a 
stool and sat down squarely before him. 

“ Now look here,” he said with the candour 


p 


209 


210 


The Choir Invisible 


which was always the first law of nature with 
him, “ what have I done to you ? ” 

Peter would neither look nor speak ; but being 
powerless before kindness, he was beginning to 
break down. 

“Out with it,” said John. “What have I 
done } ” 

“ You know what you’ve saidT 

“What have I said about youV asked John, 
now perceiving that some mischief had been at 
work here. “ Who told you I had said anything 
about you ? ” 

“ It’s no use for you to deny it.” 

“ Who told you ? ” 

“ O’Bannon ! ” 

“ O’Bannon ! ” exclaimed John with a frown. 
“ I’ve never talked to O’Bannon about you — 
about anything.” 

“ You haven’t abused me.'^” said Peter, wheel- 
ing on the schoolmaster, eyes and face and voice 
full of the suffering of his wounded self-love and 
of his wounded affection. 

“I hope I’ve abused nobody!” said John 
proudly. 

“ Come in here ! ” cried Peter, springing up 
and hurrying into his shop. 


The Choir Invisible 


21 1 


Near the door stood a walnut tree with wide- 
spreading branches wearing the fresh plumes of 
late May, plumes that hung down over the 
door and across the windows, suffusing the inte- 
rior with a soft twilight of green and brown 
shadows. A shaft of sunbeams penetrating a 
crevice fell on the white neck of a yellow collie 
that lay on the ground with his head on his 
paws, his eyes fixed reproachfully on the heels 
of the horse outside, his ears turned back toward 
his master. Beside him a box had been kicked 
over : tools and shoes scattered. A faint line of 
blue smoke sagged from the dying coals of the 
forge toward the door, creeping across the anvil 
bright as if tipped with silver. And in one of 
the darkest corners of the shop, near a bucket 
of water in which floated a huge brown gourd, 
Peter and John sat on a bench while the story of 
O’Bannon’s mischief-making was begun and fin- 
ished. It was told by Peter with much cordial 
rubbing of his elbows in the palms of his hands 
and much light-hearted smoothing of his apron 
over his knees. At times a cloud, passing be- 
neath the sun, threw the shop into heavier 
shadow ; and then the school-master’s dark figure 
faded into the tone of the sooty wall behind 


212 


The Choir Invisible 


him and only his face, with the contrast of its 
white linen collar below and the bare discerni- 
ble lights of his auburn hair above — his face, 
proud, resolute, astounded, pallid, suffering — 
started out of the gloom like a portrait from 
an old canvas. 

“And this is why you never came to see 
me.” He had sprung up like a man made well, 
and was holding Peter’s hand and looking re- 
proachfully into his eyes. 

“I’d have seen you dead first,” cried Peter 
gaily, giving him a mighty slap on the shoulder. 
“ But wait ! O’Bannon’s not the only man who 
can play a joke ! ” 

John hurriedly left the shop with a gesture 
which Peter did not understand. 

The web of deceptive circumstances that had 
been spun about him had been brushed away at 
last: he saw the whole truth now — saw his 
own blindness, blundering, folly, injustice. 

He was on his way to Amy already. 

When he had started out, he had thought he 
should walk around a little and then lie down 
again. Now with his powerful stride come 
back to him, he had soon passed the last house 
of the town and was nearing the edge of the 


The Choir Invisible 


213 


wilderness. He took the same straight short 
course of the afternoon on which he had asked 
Mrs. Falconer’s consent to his suit. As he 
hurried on, it seemed to him a long time since 
then ! What experiences he had undergone ! 
What had he not suffered! How he was 
changed ! 

“ Yes,” he said over and over to himself, put- 
ting away all other thoughts in a resolve to 
think of this nearest duty only. “ If I’ve been 
unkind to her, if I’ve been wrong, have I not 
suffered ? ” 

He had not gone far before his strength 
began to fail. He was forced to sit down and 
rest. It was near sundown when he reached 
the clearing. 

At last ! ” he said gratefully, with his old 
triumphant habit of carrying out whatever he 
undertook. He had put out all his strength to 
get there. 

He passed the nearest field — the peach trees 
— the garden — and took the path toward the 
house. 

“Where shall I find her.?” he thought. 
“ Where can I see her alone .? ” 

Between him and the house stood a building 


214 


The Choir Invisible 


of logs and plaster. It was a single room used 
for the spinning and the weaving of which she 
had charge. Many a time he had lain on the 
great oaken chest into which the homespun cloth 
was stored while she sat by her spinning-wheel ; 
many a talk they had had there together, many 
a parting; and many a Saturday twilight he 
had put his arms around her there and turned 
away for his lonely walk to town, planning their 
future. 

'Mf she should only be in the weaving- 
room ! ” 

He stepped softly to the door and looked 
in. She was there — standing near the middle 
of the room with her face turned from him. 
The work of the day was done. On one side 
were the spinning-wheels, farther on a loom; 
before her a table on which the cloth was piled 
ready to be folded away ; on the other the great 
open chest into which she was about to store it. 
She had paused in revery, her hands clasped 
behind her head. 

At the sight of her and with the remembrance 
of how he had misjudged and mistreated her — 
most of all swept on by some lingering flood 
of the old tenderness — he stepped forward, 


The Choir Invisible 


215 


put his arms softly around her, drew her closely 
to him, and buried his cheek against hers : 

“ Amy ! ” he murmured, his voice quivering, 
his whole body trembling, his heart knocking 
against his ribs like a stone. 

She struggled out of his arms with a cry and 
recognizing him, drew her figure up to its full 
height. Her eyes filled with passion, cold and 
resentful. 

He made a gesture. 

“ Wait ! ” he cried. “ Listen.” 

He laid bare everything — from his finding 
of the bundle to the evening of the ball. 

He was standing by the doorway. A small 
window in the opposite wall of the low room 
opened toward the west. Through this a crim- 
son light fell upon his face revealing its pallor, 
its storm, its struggle for calmness. 

She stood a few yards off with her face 
in shadow. As she had stepped backward, one 
of her hands had struck against her spinning- 
wheel and now rested on it ; with the other she 
had caught the edge of the table. From the 
spinning-wheel a thread of flax trailed to the 
ground ; on the table lay a pair of iron shears. 

As he stood looking at her facing him thus 


2i6 


The Choir Invisible 


in cold half-shadowy anger — at the spinning, 
wheel with its trailing flax — at the table with 
its iron shears — at her hands stretched forth 
as if about to grasp the one and to lay hold 
on the other — he shudderingly thought of 
the ancient arbitress of Life and Death — 
Fate the mighty, the relentless. The fancy 
passed and was succeeded by the sense of 
her youth and loveliness. She wore a dress 
of coarse snow-white homespun, narrow in the 
skirt and fitting close to her arms and neck and 
to the outlines of her form. Her hair was 
parted simply over her low beautiful brow. 
There was nowhere a ribbon or a trifle of 
adornment: and in that primitive, simple, fear- 
less revelation of itself her figure had the frank- 
ness of a statue. 

While he spoke the anger died out of her 
face. But in its stead came something worse 
— hardness; and something that was worse 
still — an expression of revenge. 

“ If I was unfeeling with you,” he implored, 
“ only consider ! You had broken your engage- 
ment without giving any reason ; I saw you at 
the party dancing with Joseph; I believed my- 
self trifled with. I said that if you could treat 


The Choir Invisible 


217 


me in that way there was nothing you could 
say that I cared to hear. I was blind to the 
truth; I was blinded by suffering.” 

If you suffered, it was your own fault,” she 
replied, calm as the Fate that holds the shears 
and the thread. I wanted to explain to you 
why I broke my engagement and why I went 
with Joseph: you refused to allow me.” 

But before that ! Remember that I had 
gone to see you the night before. You had a 
chance to explain then. But you did not ex- 
plain. Still, I did not doubt that your reason 
was good. I did not ask you to state it. But 
when I saw you at the party with Joseph, was 
I not right, in thinking that the time for an 
explanation had passed.?” 

“No,” she replied. “As long as I did not 
give any reason, you ought not to have asked 
for one; but when I wished to give it, you 
should have been ready to hear it.” 

He drew himself up quickly. 

“This is a poor pitiful misunderstanding. 
I say, forgive me ! We will let it pass. I had 
thought each of us was wrong — you first, I, 
afterward.” 

“ I was not wrong either first or last ! ” 


2I8 


The Choir Invisible 


“ Think so if you must ! Only, try to under- 
stand me! Amy, you know I’ve loved you. 
You could never have acted toward me as you 
have, if you had not believed that. And that 
night — the night you would not see me alone — 
I went to ask you to marry me. I meant to 
ask you the next night. ... I am here to 
ask you now ! . . .” 

He told her of the necessity that had kept 
him from speaking sooner, of the recent change 
which made it possible. He explained how he 
had waited and planned and had shaped his 
whole life with the thought that she would 
share it. 

She had listened with greater interest espe- 
cially to what he had said about the improve- 
ment in his fortunes. Her head had dropped 
slightly forward as though she were thinking 
that after all perhaps she had made a mistake. 
But she now lifted it with deliberateness : 

“And what right had you to be so sure all 
this time that I would marry you whenever 
you asked me .? What right had you to take 
it for granted that whenever you were ready, I 
would be ? ” 

The hot flush of shame dyed his face that 


The Choir Invisible 


219 

she could deal herself such a wound and not 
even know it. 

He drew himself up again, sparing her: 

“ I loved you. I could not love without hop- 
ing. I could not hope without planning. Hop- 
ing, planning, striving, — everything! — it was 
all because I loved you I ” And then he waited, 
looking down on her in silence. 

She began to grow nervous. She had stooped 
to pick up the thread of flax and was passing it 
slowly between her fingers. When he spoke 
again, his voice showed that he shook like a 
man with a chill : 

“ I have said all I can say. I have offered 
all I have to offer. I am waiting.” 

Still the silence lasted for the new awe of 
him that began to fall upon her. In ways she 
could not fathom she was beginning to feel 
that a change had come over him during 
these weeks of their separation. He used 
more gentleness with her: his voice, his man- 
ner, his whole bearing had finer courtesy; he 
had strangely ascended to some higher level of 
character, and he spoke to her from this dis- 
tance with a sadness that touched her indefin- 
ably — with a larger manliness that had its 


220 


The Choir Invisible 


quick effect. She covertly lifted her eyes and 
beheld on his face a proud passion of beauty 
and of pain beyond anything that she had 
ever thought possible to him or to any man. 
She quickly dropped her head again ; she 
shifted her position ; a band seemed to tighten 
around her throat ; until, in a voice hardly to be 
heard, she murmured falteringly : 

“I have promised to marry Joseph.” 

He did not speak or move, but continued to 
stand leaning against the lintel of the doorway, 
looking down on her. The colour was fading 
from the west leaving it ashen white. And 
so standing in the dying radiance, he saw the 
long bright day of his young hope come to 
its close; he drained to its dregs his cup of 
bitterness she had prepared for him; learned 
his first lesson in the victory of little things 
over the larger purposes of life, over the nobler 
planning ; bit the dust of the heart’s first defeat 
and tragedy. 

She had caught up the iron shears in her 
nervousness and begun to cut the flaxen thread ; 
and in the silence of the room only the rusty 
click was now heard as she clipped it, clipped 
it, clipped it. 


The Choir Invisible 


221 


Then such a greater trembling seized her 
that she laid the shears back upon the table. 
Still he did not move or speak, and there 
seemed to fall upon her conscience an insup- 
portable burden until, as if by no will of her 
own, she spoke again pitifully: 

“ I didn’t know that you cared so much for 
me. It isn’t my fault You had never asked 
me, and he had already asked me twice.” 

He changed his position quickly so that the 
last light coming in through the window could 
no longer betray his face. All at once his voice 
broke through the darkness, so unlike itself that 
she started : 

‘‘When did you give him this promise.!* i 
have no right to ask , . . when did you give 
him this promise ” 

She answered as if by no will of her own : 

“The night of the ball — as we were going 
home.” 

She waited until she felt that she should sink 
to the ground. 

Then he spoke again as if rather to himself 
than to her, and with the deepest sorrow and 
pity for them both: 

“ If I had gone with you that night — if I 


222 


The Choir Invisible 


had gone with you that night — and had ac»ked 
you — you would have married meC 

Her lips began to quiver and all that was in 
her to break down before him — to yearn for 
him. In a voice neither could scarce hear she 
said : 

“ I will marry you yet ! ” 

She listened. She waited. Out of the dark- 
ness she could distinguish not the rustle of a 
movement, not a breath of sound ; and at last 
cowering back into herself with shame, she 
buried her face in her hands. 

Then she was aware that he had come for- 
ward and was standing over her. He bent his 
head down so close that his lips touched her 
hair — so close that his warm breath was on her 
forehead — and she felt rather than knew him 
saying to himself, not to her : 

“ Good-bye ! ” 

He passed like a tall spirit out of the door, 
and she heard his footsteps die away along the 
path — die slowly away as of one who goes 
never to return. 


XV 


A JEST may be the smallest pebble that was 
ever dropped into the sunny mid-ocean of the 
mind ; but sooner or later it sinks to a hard 
bottom, sooner or later sends its ripples toward 
the shores where the caves of the fatal passions 
yawn and roar for wreckage. It is the Comedy 
of speech that forever dwells as Tragedy’s fond- 
est sister, sharing with her the same unmarked 
domain ; for the two are but identical forces of 
the mind in gentle and in ungentle action as one 
atmosphere holds within itself unseparated the 
zephyr and the storm. 

The following afternoon O’Bannon was am- 
bling back to town — slowly and awkwardly, 
he being a poor rider and dreading a horse’s 
back as he would have avoided its kick. 
He was returning from the paper mill at 
Georgetown whither he had been sent by Mr. 
Bradford with an order for a further supply 
of sheets. The errand had not been a con- 
genial one ; and he was thinking now as often 
223 


224 


The Choir Invisible 


before that he would welcome any chance of 
leaving the editor’s service. 

What he had always coveted since his com- 
ing into the wilderness was the young master’s 
school ; for the Irish teacher, afterwards so well- 
known a figure in the West, was even at this 
time beginning to bend his mercurial steps 
across the mountains. Out of his covetous- 
ness had sprung perhaps his enmity toward 
the master, whom he further despised for his 
Scotch blood, and in time had grown to dislike 
from motives of jealousy, and last of all to hate 
for his simple purity. Many a man nurses a 
grudge of this kind against his human brother 
and will take pains to punish him accordingly ; 
for success in virtue is as hard for certain 
natures to witness as success in anything else 
will irritate those whose nerveless or impatient 
or ill-directed grasp it has wisely eluded. 

On all accounts therefore it had fallen well 
to his purpose to make the schoolmaster the 
dupe of a disagreeable jest. The jest had 
had unexpectedly serious consequences : it had 
brought about the complete discomfiture of 
John in his love affair; it had caused the 
trouble behind the troubled face with which 


The Choir Invisible 


225 


he had looked out upon every one during his 
illness. 

The two young men had never met since; 
but the one was under a cloud ; the other was 
refulgent with his petty triumph; and he had 
set his face all the more toward any further 
aggressiveness that occasion should bring hap- 
pily to his hand. 

The mere road might have shamed him into 
manlier reflections. It was one of the forest 
highways of the majestic bison opened ages 
before into what must have been to them 
Nature’s most gorgeous kingdom, her fairest, 
most magical Babylon: with hanging gardens 
of verdure everywhere swung from the tree- 
domes to the ground ; with the earth one vast 
rolling garden of softest verdure and crystal 
waters : an ancient Babylon of the Western 
woods, most alluring and in the end most fatal 
to the luxurious, wantoning wild creatures, 
which know no sin and are never found 
wanting. 

This old forest street of theirs, so broad, 
so roomy, so arched with hoary trees, so silent 
now and filled with the pity and pathos of their 
ruin — it may not after all have been marked 
Q 


226 


The Choir Invisible 


out by them. But ages before they had ever 
led their sluggish armies eastward to the Mis- 
sissippi and, crossing, had shaken its bright 
drops from their shaggy low-hung necks on the 
eastern bank — ages before this, while the sun 
of human history was yet silvering the dawn of 
the world — before Job’s sheep lay sick in the 
land of Uz — before a lion had lain down to 
dream in the jungle where Babylon was to 
arise and to become a name, — this old, old, 
old high road may have been a footpath of the 
awful mastodon, who had torn his terrible way 
through the tangled, twisted, gnarled and rooted 
fastnesses of the wilderness as lightly as a wild 
young Cyclone out of the South tears his way 
through the ribboned corn. 

Ay, for ages the mastodon had trodden this 
dust. And, ay, for ages later the bison. And, 
ay, for ages a people, over whose vanished 
towns and forts and graves had grown the 
trees of a thousand years, holding in the 
mighty claws of their roots the dust of those 
long, long secrets. And for centuries later 
still along this path had crept or rushed or fled 
the Indians : now coming from over the moon- 
loved, fragrant, passionate Southern mountains ; 


The Choir Invisible 


227 


now from the sad frozen forests and steely 
marges of the Lakes : both eager for the chase. 
For into this high road of the mastodon and the 
bison smaller pathways entered from each side, 
as lesser watercourses run into a river: the 
avenues of the round-horned elk, narrow, yet 
broad enough for the tossing of his lordly 
antlers ; the trails of the countless migrating 
shuffling bear ; the slender woodland alleys 
along which buck and doe and fawn had sought 
the springs or crept tenderly from their breed- 
ing coverts or fled like shadows in the race for 
life ; the devious wolf-runs of the maddened 
packs as they had sprung to the kill ; the 
threadlike passages of the stealthy fox ; the 
tiny trickle of the squirrel, crossing, recross- 
ing, without number; and ever close beside all 
these, unseen, the grass-path or the tree-path 
of the cougar. 

Ay, both eager for the chase at first and then 
more eager for each other’s death for the sake 
of the whole chase : so that this immemorial 
game-trace had become a war-path — a long 
dim forest street alive with the advance and 
retreat of plume-bearing, vermilion-painted ar- 
mies; and its rich black dust, on which here 


228 


The Choir Invisible 


and there a few scars of sunlight now lay like 
stillest thinnest yellow leaves, had been dyed 
from end to end with the red of the heart. 

And last of all into this ancient woodland 
street of war one day there had stepped a 
strange new-comer — the Anglo-Saxon. Fair- 
haired, blue-eyed, always a lover of Land and 
of Woman and therefore of Home ; in whose 
blood beat the conquest of many a wilderness 
before this — the wilderness of Britain, the wil- 
derness of Normandy, the wildernesses of the 
Black, of the Hercinian forest, the wilderness 
of the frosted marshes of the Elbe and the 
Rhine and of the North Sea’s wildest wander- 
ing foam and fury. 

Here white lover and red lover had met 
and fought : with the same high spirit and 
overstrung will, scorn of danger, greed of pain ; 
the same vehemence of hatred and excess of 
revenge ; the same ideal of a hero as a young 
man who stands in the thick of carnage calm 
and unconscious of his wounds or rushes gladly 
to any poetic beauty of death that is terrible 
and sublime. And already the red lover was 
gone and the fair-haired lover stood the quiet 
owner of the road, the last of all its long train 


The Choir Invisible 229 

of conquerors brute and human — with his 
cabin near by, his wife smiling beside the spin- 
ning-wheel, his baby crowing on the threshold. 

History was thicker here than along the 
Appian Way and it might well have stirred 
O’Bannon ; but he rode shamblingly on, un- 
touched, unmindful. At every bend his eye 
quickly ^ept along the stretch of road to the 
next turn ; for every man carried the eye of an 
eagle in his head in those days. 

At one point he pulled his horse up violently. 
A large buckeye tree stood on the roadside a 
hundred yards ahead. Its large thick leaves 
already full at this season, drew around the 
trunk a seamless robe of darkest green. But 
a single slight rent had been made on one side 
as though a bough had been lately broken off 
to form an aperture commanding a view of the 
road ; and through this aperture he could see 
something black within — as black as a crow’s 
wing. 

O’Bannon sent his horse forward in the slow- 
est walk : it was unshod ; the stroke of its 
hoofs was muffled by the dust ; and he had 
approached quite close, remaining himself unob' 
served, before he recognized the school-master. 


230 


The Choir Invisible 


He was reclining against the trunk, his hat 
off, his eyes closed ; in the heavy shadows he 
looked white and sick and weak and troubled. 
Plainly he was buried deep in his own thoughts. 
If he had broken off those low boughs in order 
that he might obtain a view of the road, he had 
forgotten his own purpose ; if he had walked 
all the way out to this spot and was waiting, 
his vigilance had grown lax, his aim slipped 
from him. 

Perhaps before his eyes the historic vision 
of the road had risen : that crowded pageant, 
brute and human, all whose red passions, burn- 
ing rights and burning wrongs, frenzied fight- 
ings and awful deaths had left but the sun- 
scarred dust, the silence of the woods clothing 
itself in green. And from this panoramic 
survey it may have come to him to feel the 
shortness of the day of his own life, the piti- 
fulness of its earthly contentions, and above 
everything else the sadness of the necessity 
laid upon him to come down to the level of the 
cougar and the wolf. 

But as O’Bannon struck his horse and would 
have passed on, he sprang up quickly enough 
and walked out into the middle of the road. 


The Choir invisible 231 

When the horse’s head was near he quietly 
took hold of the reins and throwing his weight 
slightly forward, brought it to a stop. 

“ Let go ! ” exclaimed O’Bannon, furious and 
threatening. 

He did let go, and stepping backward three 
paces, he threw off his coat and waistcoat and 
tossed them aside to the green bushes: the 
action was a pathetic mark of his lifelong 
habit of economy in clothes : a coat must 
under all circumstances be cared for. He tore 
off his neckcloth so that his high shirt collar 
fell away from his neck, showing the purple 
scar of his wound ; and he girt his trousers in 
about his waist, as a laboring man will trim 
himself for neat, quick, violent work. Then 
with a long stride he came round to the side 
of the horse’s head, laid his hand on its neck 
and looked O’Bannon in the eyes : 

‘‘At first I thought I’d wait till you got back 
to town. I wanted to catch you on the street 
or in a tavern where others could witness. I’m 
sorry. I’m ashamed I ever wished any man to 
see me lay my hand on you. 

“ Since you came out to Kentucky, have I 
ever crossed you ? Thwarted you in any plan 


232 


The Choir Invisible 


or purpose ? Wronged you in any act ? Ill- 
used your name ? By anything I have thought 
or wished or done taken from the success of 
your life or made success harder for you to 
win ? 

‘*But you had hardly come cut here before 
you began to attack me and you have never 
stopped. Out of all this earth’s prosperity you 
have envied me my little share : you have tried 
to take away my school. With your own good 
name gone, you have wished to befoul mine. 
With no force of character to rise in the world, 
you have sought to drag me down. When I 
have avoided a brawl with you, preferring to 
live my life in peace with every man, you have 
said I was a coward, you unmanly slanderer ! 
When I have desired to live the best life I 
could, you have turned even that against me. 
You lied and you know you lied — blackguard! 
You have laughed at the blood in my veins — 
the sacred blood of my mother — ” 

His words choked him. The Scotch blood, 
so slow to kindle like a mass of cold anthra- 
cite, so terrible with heat to the last ashes, 
was burning in him now with flameless fury. 

I passed it all over. I only asked to go on 


The Choir Invisible 


233 


my way and have you go yours. But now — ” 
He seemed to realize in an instant everything 
that he had suffered in consequence of O’Ban- 
non’s last interference in his affairs. He 
ground his teeth together and shook his head 
from side to side like an animal that had seized 
its prey. 

Get down ! he cried, throwing his head 
back. “I can’t fight you as an equal but I 
will give you one beating for the low dog you 
are.” 

O’Bannon had listened immovable. He now 
threw the reins down and started to throw his 
leg over the saddle but resumed his seat. “ Let 
go ! ” he shouted. I will not be held and 
ordered.” 

The school-master tightened his grasp on the 
reins. 

“ Get down ! I don’t trust you.” 

O’Bannon held a short heavy whip. He 
threw this into the air and caught it by the 
little end. 

The school-teacher sprang to seize it; but 
O’Bannon lifted it backward over his shoulder, 
and then raising himself high in his stirrups, 
brought it down. The master saw it coming 


234 


The Choir Invisible 


and swerved so that it grazed his ear; but it 
cut into the wound on his neck with a coarse, 
ugly, terrific blow and the blood spurted. With 
a loud cry of agony and horror, he reeled 
and fell backward dizzy and sick and nigh to 
fainting. The next moment in the deadly 
silence of a wild beast attacking to kill, he 
was on his feet, seized the whip before it could 
fall again, flung it away, caught O’Bannon’s 
arm and planting his foot against the horse’s 
shoulder, threw his whole weight backward. 
The saddle turned, the horse sprang aside, and 
he fell again, pulling O’Bannon heavily down 
on him. 

There in the blood-dyed dust of the old wood- 
land street, where bison and elk, stag and lynx, 
wolf and cougar and bear had gored or torn 
each other during the centuries before; there 
on the same level, glutting their passion, their 
hatred, their revenge, the men fought out their 
strength — the strength of that King of Beasts 
whose den is where it should be : in a man’s 
spirit. 

A few afternoons after this a group of rough 
young fellows were gathered at Peter’s shop. 


The Choir Invisible 


235 


The talk had turned to the subject of the 
fight: and every one had thrown his gibe at 
O’Bannon, who had taken it with equal good 
nature. From this they had chaffed him on 
his fondness for a practical joke and his awk- 
ward riding; and out of this, he now being 
angry, grew a bet with Horatio Turpin that 
he could ride the latter’s filly, standing hitched 
to the fence of the shop. He was to ride it 
three times around the enclosure, and touch 
it once each time in the flank with the spur 
which the young horseman took from his heel. 

At the first prick of it, the high-spirited 
mettlesome animal, scarcely broken, reared and 
sprang forward, all but unseating him. He 
dropped the reins and instinctively caught its 
mane, at the same time pressing his legs more 
closely in against the animal’s sides, thus driv- 
ing the spur deeper. They shouted to him 
to lie down, to fall off, as they saw the awful 
danger ahead; for the maddened filly, having 
run wildly around the enclosure several times, 
turned and rushed straight toward the low open 
doors of the smithy and the pasture beyond. 
But he would not release his clutch ; and with 
his body bent a little forward, he received the 


236 


The Choir Invisible 


blow of the projecting shingles full on his head 
as the mare shot from under him into the shop, 
scraping him off. 

They ran to him and lifted him out of the 
sooty dust and laid him on the soft green grass. 
But of consciousness there was never to be 
more for him : his jest had reached its end. 


XVI 


It was early summer now. 

In the depths of the greening woods the 
school-master lay reading : 

^^And tJms it passed on front Candlemass tmtil 
after Easter that the month of May was come^ 
when every lusty heart beginneth to blossom and 
to bring forth fruit ; for like as herbs and trees 
brhtg forth fruit and flourish in May, in like- 
wise^ every lusty heart that is any manner a lover 
springeth and Jlourisheth in lusty deeds. For 
it giveth unto all lovers courage — that lusty 
month of May — in something to constrain him 
to some manner of thing more in that month 
than in any other month. For diverse causes: 
For then all herbs and trees renew a man and 
woman; and, in liketvise, lovers call again to 
their mind old gentleness and old service and 
many kind deeds that were forgotten by negli- 
gence. For like as winter rastire doth alway 
erase and deface green summer, so fareth it by 


237 


238 


The Choir Invisible 


unstable love in man and woman. For in many 
persons there is no stability ; . . . for a little 
blast of winter s rasnre^ anon we shall deface 
and lay apart trne love {for little or naught) ^ 
that cost so much. This is no wisdom nor 
stability y but it is feebleness of nature and great 
disivorship whomsoever useth this. Therefore 
like as May month Jlowereth and flourisheth in 
many gardens^ so in likewise let every man of 
worship flourish his heart in this world: first 
unto Gody and next unto the 'joy of them that 
he promised his faith unto ; for there was never 
worshipful man nor worshipful ivoman but they 
loved one better than another. And worship in 
arms may never be foiled; but first reserve the 
honour to God^ and secondly the quarrel must 
come of thy lady : and such love I call virtu- 
ous love. But nowadays men cannot love seven 
nights but they must have all their desires. . . . 
Right so fareth love nowadays, soon hot, soon 
cold: this is no stability. But the old love was 
not so. Men and tvomen coidd love together 
seven years . . . and then was love truth and 
faithf d7iess. And lo ! in likewise was used love 
in King Arthurs days. Wherefore I liken love 
nowadays unto summer ayid winter ; for like as 


The Choir Invisible 


239 

the one is hot and the other coldy so fa7'eth love 
now a day sT . . . 

He laid the book aside upon the grass, sat up, 
and mournfully looked about him. Effort was 
usually needed to withdraw his mind from those 
low-down shadowy centuries over into which 
of late by means of the book, as by means of a 
bridge spanning a known and an unknown land, 
he had crossed, and wonder-stricken had wan- 
dered ; but these words brought him swiftly 
home to the country of his own sorrow. 

Unstable love ! feebleness of nature ! one 
blast of a cutting winter wind and lo ! green 
summer defaced : the very phrases seemed 
shaped by living lips close to the ear of his 
experience. It was in this spot a few weeks 
ago that he had planned his future with Amy : 
these were the acres he would buy ; on this 
hill-top he would build ; here, home-sheltered, 
wife-anchored, the warfare of his flesh and 
spirit ended, he could begin to put forth all 
his strength upon the living of his life. 

Had any frost ever killed the bud of nature’s 
hope more unexpectedly than this landscape 
now lay blackened before him ? And had any 
summer ever cost so much ? What could strike 


240 


The Choir Invisible 


a man as a more mortal wound than to lose the 
woman he had loved and in losing her see her 
lose her loveliness ? 

As the end of it all, he now found himself 
sitting on the blasted rock of his dreams in the 
depths of the greening woods. He was well 
again by this time and conscious of that re- 
tightened grasp upon health and redder stir 
of life with which the great Mother-nurse, if 
she but dearly love a man, will tend him and 
mend him and set him on his feet again from 
a bed of wounds or sickness. It had happened 
to him also that with this reflushing of his 
blood there had reached him the voice of 
Summer advancing northward to all things and 
making all things common in their awakening 
and their aim. 

He knew of old the pipe of this imperious 
Shepherd ; sounding along the inner vales of his 
being ; herding him toward universal fellowship 
with seeding grass and breeding herb and every 
heart-holding creature of the woods. He per- 
fectly recognized the sway of the thrilling pipe ; 
he perfectly realized the joy of the jubilant fel- 
lowship. And it was with eyes the more mourn- 
ful therefore that he gazed in purity about him 


Tke Choir Invisible 


241 


at the universal miracle of old life passing into 
new life, at the divinely appointed and divinely 
fulfilled succession of forms, at the unrent 
mantle of the generations being visibly woven 
around him under the golden goads of the sun. 

. for like as herbs bring forth fruit and 
flourish in Maj/, in likewise^ every heart that is 
in any manner a lover springeth and flourisheth 
in lusty deeds! . . . But all this must come, 
must spend itself, must pass him by, as a flam- 
ing pageant dies away from a beholder who is 
forbidden to kindle his own torch and claim his 
share of its innocent revels. He too had laid 
his plans to celebrate his marriage at the full 
tide of the Earth’s joy, and these plans had 
failed him. 

But while the school-master thus was gloomily 
contemplating the end of his relationship with 
Amy and her final removal from the future of 
his life, in reality another and larger trouble 
was looming close ahead. 

A second landscape had begun to beckon : 
not like his poor little frost-killed field, not of 
the earth at all, but lifted unattainable into the 
air, faint, clear, elusive — the mirage of another 
woman. And how different she ! He felt sure 


242 The Choir hivisihle 

that no winter’s rasure would ever reach that 
land ; no instability, no feebleness of nature 
awaited him there ; the loveliness of its sum- 
mer, now brooding at flood, would brood un- 
harmed upon it to the natural end. 

He buried his face guiltily in his hands as he 
tried to shut out the remembrance of how per- 
sistently of late, whithersoever he had turned, 
this second image had reappeared before him, 
growing always clearer, drawing always nearer, 
summoning him more luringly. Already he 
had begun to know the sensations of a traveller 
who is crossing sands with a parched tongue 
and a weary foot, crossing toward a country 
that he will never reach, but that he will 
stagger toward as long as he has strength to 
stand. 

During the past several days — following his 
last interview with Amy — he had realized for 
the first time how long and how plainly the 
figure of Mrs. Falconer had been standing be- 
fore him and upon how much loftier a level. 
Many a time of old, while visiting the house, he 
had grown tired of Amy; but he had never felt 
wearied by her. For Amy he was always mak- 
ing apologies to his own conscience ; she needed 


The Choir Invisible 


243 


none. He had secretly hoped that in time Amy 
would become more what he wished his wife 
to be; it would have pained him to think of 
her as altered. Often he had left Amy’s 
company with a grateful sense of regaining 
the larger liberty of his own mind ; by her he 
always felt guided to his better self, he carried 
away her ideas with the hope of making them 
his ideas, he was set on fire with a spiritual 
passion to do his utmost in the higher strife of 
the world. 

For this he had long paid her the guiltless 
tribute of his reverence and affection. And 
between his reverence and affection and all 
the forbidden that lay beyond rose a barrier 
which not even his imagination had ever con- 
sciously overleaped. Now the forbidding bar- 
rier had disappeared, and in its place had 
appeared the forbidden bond — he knew not 
how or when. How could he } Love, the 
Scarlet Spider, will in a night hang between 
two that have been apart a web too fine for 
either to see ; but the strength of both will 
never avail to break it. 

Very curiously it had befallen him further- 
more that just at the time when all these 


244 


The Choir Invisible 


changes were taking place around him and 
within him, she had brought him the book that 
she had pressed with emphasis upon his atten- 
tion. 

In the backwoods settlements of Pennsyl- 
vania where his maternal Scotch-Irish ances- 
tors had settled and his own life been spent, 
very few volumes had fallen into his hands. 
After coming to Kentucky not many more 
until of late : so that of the world’s history he 
was still a stinted and hungry student. When, 
therefore, she had given him Malory’s “Le 
Morte D’Arthur,” it was the first time that the 
ideals of chivalry had ever flashed their glorious 
light upon him ; for the first time the models of 
Christian manhood, on which western Europe 
nourished itself for centuries, displayed them- 
selves to his imagination with the charm of 
story ; he heard of Camelot, of the king, of 
that company of men who strove with each 
other in arms, but strove also with each other 
in grace of life and for the immortal mysteries 
of the spirit. 

She had said that he should have read this 
book long before but that henceforth he would 
always need it even more than in his past : that 


The Choir Invisible 


245 


here were some things he had looked for in the 
world and had never found ; characters such as 
he had always wished to grapple to himself as 
his abiding comrades : that if he would love the 
best that it loved, hate what it hated, scorn what 
it scorned, it would help him in the pursuit of 
his own ideals to the end. 

Of this and more he felt at once the truth, 
since of all earthly books known to him this con- 
tained the most heavenly revelation of what a 
man may be in manliness, in gentleness, and in 
goodness. And as he read the nobler portions 
of the book, the nobler parts of his nature gave 
out their immediate response. 

Hungrily he hurried to and fro across the 
harvest of those fertile pages, gathering of the 
white wheat of the spirit many a lustrous sheaf : 
the love of courage, the love of courtesy, the 
love of honour, the love of high aims and great 
actions, the love of the poor and the helpless, 
the love of a spotless name and a spotless 
life, the love of kindred, the love of friendship, 
the love of humility of spirit, the love of for- 
giveness, the love of beauty, the love of love, 
the love of God. Surely, he said to himself, 
within the band of these virtues lay not only 


246 


The Choir Invisible 


a man’s noblest life, but the noblest life of the 
world. 

While fondling these, he failed not to notice 
how the great book, as though it were a living 
mouth, spat its deathless scorn upon the things 
that he also — in the imperfect measure f his 
powers — had always hated : all cowardice of 
mind or body, all lying, all oppression, all un- 
faithfulness, all secret revenge and hypocrisy 
and double-dealing : the smut of the heart and 
mind. 

But ah ! the other things besides these. 

Sown among the white wheat of the spirit 
were the red tares of the flesh ; and as he 
strode back and forth through the harvest, he 
found himself plucking these also with feverish 
vehemence. There were things here that he 
had never seen in print : words that he had 
never even named to his secret consciousness ; 
thoughts and desires that he had put away from 
his soul with many a struggle, many a prayer; 
stories of a kind that he had always declined to 
hear when told in companies of men : all here, 
spelled out, barefaced, without apology, with- 
out shame : the deposits of those old, old moral 
voices and standards long since buried deep 


The Choir Invisible 


247 

under the ever rising level of the world’s 
whitening holiness. 

With utter guilt and shame he did not leave 
off till he had plucked the last red tare ; and 
having plucked them, he had hugged the whole 
inflaming bundle against his blood — his blood 
now flushed with youth, flushed with health, 
flushed with summer. 

And finally, in the midst of all these things, 
perhaps coloured by them, there had come to 
him the first great awakening of his life in a 
love that was forbidden. 

He upbraided himself the more bitterly for 
the influence of the book because it was she 
who had placed both the good and the evil in 
his hand with perfect confidence that he would 
lay hold on the one and remain unsoiled by the 
other. She had remained spirit-proof herself 
against the influences that tormented him ; out 
of her own purity she had judged him. And 
yet, on the other hand, with that terrible can- 
dour of mind which he used either for or against 
himself as rigidly as for or against another per- 
son, he pleaded in his own behalf that she had 
made a mistake in overestimating his strength, in 
underestimating his temptations. How should 


248 


The Choir Invisible 


she know that for years his warfare had gone 
on direfully ? How realize that almost daily he 
had stood as at the dividing of two roads : the 
hard, narrow path ascending to the bleak white 
peaks of the spirit ; the broad, sweet, downward 
vistas of the flesh ? How foresee, therefore, that 
the book would only help to rend him in twain 
with a mightier passion for each ? 

He had been back at the school a week now. 
He had never dared go to see her. Confront 
that luminous face with his darkened one } Deal 
such a soul the wound of such dishonour.!^ He 
knew very well that the slightest word or glance 
of self-betrayal would bring on the immediate 
severance of her relationship with him : her 
wifehood might be her martyrdom, but it was 
martyrdom inviolate. And yet he felt that if 
he were once with her, he could not be respon- 
sible for the consequences : he could foresee no 
degree of self-control that would keep him from 
telling her that he loved her. He had been 
afraid to go. 

But ah, how her image drew him day and 
night, day and night ! Slipping between him 
and every other being, every other desire. Her 
voice kept calling to him to come to her — a 


The Choir Invisible 


M9 

voice new, irresistible, that seemed to issue 
from the deeps of Summer, from the deeps of 
Life, from the deeps of Love, with its almighty 
justification. 

This was his first Saturday. To-day he had 
not even the school as a post of duty, to which 
he might lash himself for safety. He had gone 
away from town in an opposite direction from 
her home, burying himself alone in the forest. 
But between him and that summoning voice he 
could put no distance. It sang out afresh to 
him from the inviting silence of the woods as 
well as from its innumerable voices. It sang 
to him reproachfully from the pages of the old 
book: “/« ^he lusty month of May lovers call 
again to their mind old gentleness and old ser- 
vice and many deeds that were forgotten by negli- 
gence he had never even gone to thank her 
for all her kindness to him during his illness ! 

Still he held out, wrestling with himself. At 
last Love itself, the deceiver, snaringly pleaded 
that she alone could cure him of all this folly. 
It had grown up wholly during his absence from 
her, no doubt by reason of this. Many a time 
before he had gone to her about other troubles, 
and always he had found her carrying that steady 


250 


The Choir Invisible 


light of right-mindedness which had scattered 
his darkness and revealed his better pathway. 

He sprang up and set off sternly through the 
woods. Goaded by love, he fancied that the 
presence of the forbidden woman would restore 
him to his old, blameless friendship. 


XVII 


She was at work in the garden : he had long 
ago noted that she never idled. 

He approached the fence and leaned on it 
as when they had last talked together ; but his 
big Jacobin hat was pulled down over his eyes 
now. He was afraid of his own voice, afraid 
of the sound of his knuckles, so that when 
at last he had rapped on the fence, he hoped 
that she had not heard, so that he could go 
away. 

Knock louder,” she called out from under 
her bonnet. I’m not sure that I heard 
you.” 

How sunny her voice was, how pure and 
sweet and remote from any suspicion of hover- 
ing harm ! It unshackled him as from a dread- 
ful nightmare. 

He broke into his old laugh — the first time 
since he had stood there before — and frankly 
took off his hat. 


251 


252 


The Choir Invisible 


‘‘How did you know who it was? You saw 
me coming ! ” 

“ Did I ? I don’t like to contradict a stran- 
ger.” 

“ Am I a stranger ? ” 

“What makes a stranger? How long has it 
been since you were here ?” 

“A lifetime,” he replied gravely. 

“You are still living! Will you walk into 
my parlour ? ” 

“Will you meet me at the door?” 

It was so pleasant to seem gay, to say 
nothing, be nothing! She came quietly over 
to the fence and gave him her hand with a 
little laugh. 

“You have holiday of Saturdays. I have 
not, you see. But I can take a recess : come 
in. You are looking well ! Wounds agree 
with you.” 

He went trembling round to the gate, passed 
in, and they sat down on the bench. 

“How things grow in this soil,” she said 
pointing to the garden. “ It has only been 
five or six weeks since you were here. Do 
you remember? I was planting the seed; 
now look at the plants ! ” 


The Choir Invisible 


253 


“I, too, was sowing that afternoon,” he re- 
plied musingly. But my harvest ripened be- 
fore yours ; I have already reaped it.” 

What’s that you are saying about me.?” 
called out a hard, smooth voice from over the 
fence at their back. I don’t like to miss any- 
thing ! ” 

Amy had a piece of sewing, which she pro- 
ceeded to spread upon the fence. 

Will you show me about this. Aunt Jessica.?” 

She greeted John without embarrassment or 
discernible remembrance of their last meeting. 
Her fine blond hair was frowsy and a button 
was missing at the throat of her dress. (Some 
women begin to let themselves go after mar- 
riage; some after the promise of marriage.) 
There were cake-crumbs also in one corner of 
her mouth. 

These are some of my wedding clothes,” 
she said to him prettily. Aren’t they fine .? 

Mrs. Falconer drew her attention for a 
moment and then began to measure the cloth 
over the back of her finger, counting the 
lengths under her breath. 

Amy took a pin from the bosom of her dress 
and picked between her pearly teeth daintily. 


254 


The Choir Invisible 


^^Aunt Jessica/’ she suddenly inquired with 
a mischievous look at John, “before you were 
engaged to uncle, was there any one else you 
liked better ? ” 

With a terrible inward start, he shot a covert 
glance at her and dropped his eyes. Mrs. Fal- 
coner’s answer was playful and serene. 

“ It has been a long time ; it’s hard to re- 
member. But I’ve heard of such cases.” 

There was something in the reply that sur- 
prised Amy and she peeped under Mrs. Fal- 
coner’s bonnet to see what was going on. She 
had learned that a great deal went on under 
that bonnet. 

“Well, after you were engaged to him, was 
there anybody else } ” 

“I don’t think I remember. But I’ve known 
of such cases.” 

Amy peeped again, and the better to see 
for herself hereafter, coolly lifted the bonnet 
off. 

“ Well, after you were married to him,” she 
said, “was there anybody else.? I’ve known 
of such cases,” she added, with a dry imitation 
of the phrase. 

“You have made me forget my lengths,” 


The Choir Invisible 


255 

said Mrs. Falconer with unruffled innocence. 
“Til have to measure again.” 

Amy turned to John with sparkling eyes. 

“Did you ever know a man who was in love 
with a married woman } ” 

“Yes,” said John, secretly writhing, but too 
truthful to say “ no.” 

“ What did he do about it ? ” asked Amy. 

“I don’t know,” replied John, shortly. 

“ What do you think he ought to have done ? 
What would j/ou do?” asked Amy. 

“ I don’t know,” replied John, more coolly, 
turning away his confused face. 

“ Neither of you seems to know anything this 
afternoon,” observed Amy, “and I’d always 
been led to suppose that each of you knew 
everything.” 

As she departed with her sewing, she turned 
to send a final arrow, with some genuine 
feeling. 

“ I think I’ll send for imc/e to come and talk 
to me.” 

“ Stay and talk to us,” Mrs. Falconer called 
to her with a sincere, pitying laugh. “Come 
back ! ” 

Amy’s questions had passed high over her 


256 The Choir Invisible 

head like a little flock of chattering birds ; they 
had struck him low, like bullets. 

‘‘Go on,” she said quietly, when they were 
seated again, “what was it about the harvest?” 

He could not reply at once; and she let him 
sit in silence, looking across the garden while 
she took up her knitting from the end of the 
bench, and leaning lightly toward him, measured 
a few rows of stitches across his wrist. It gave 
way under her touch. 

“ These are your mittens for next winter,” she 
said softly, more softly than he had ever heard 
her speak. And the quieting melody of her 
mere tone! — how unlike that other voice which 
bored joyously into you as a bright gimlet twists 
its unfeeling head into wood. He turned on her 
one quick, beautiful look of gratitude. 

“What was it about the harvest?” she re- 
peated, forbearing to return his look, and think- 
ing that all his embarrassment followed from 
the pain of- having thus met Amy. 

He began to speak very slowly : 

“The last time I was here I boasted that I 
had yet to meet my first great defeat in life 
. . . that there was nothing stronger in the 
world than a man’s will and purpose . . , that 


The Choir Invisible 


257 


if ideals got shattered, we shattered them . . . 
that I would go on doing with my life as I had 
planned, be what I wished, have what I wanted/’ 

Well?” she urged, busy with her needles, 
know better now.” 

Aren’t you the better for knowing better?” 

He made no reply ; so that she began to say 
very simply and as a matter of course : 

It’s the defeat more than anything else that 
hurts you ! Defeat is always the hardest thing 
for you to stand, even in trifles. But don’t you 
know that we have to be defeated in order to 
succeed? Most of us spend half our lives in 
fighting for things that would only destroy us if 
we got them. A man who has never been de- 
feated is usually a man who has been ruined. 
And, of course,” she added with light raillery, 
‘^of course there are things stronger than the 
strongest will and purpose : the sum of other 
men’s wills and purposes, for instance. A 
single soldier may have all the will and pur- 
pose to whip an army, but he doesn’t do it. 
And a man may have all the will and purpose 
to whip the world, walk over it rough-shod, 
shoulder it out of his way as you’d like to do, 
but he doesn’t do it. And of course we do 


s 


258 


The Choir Invisible 


not shatter our ideals ourselves — always: a 
thousand things outside ourselves do that for 
us. And what reason had you to say that you 
would have what you wanted? Your wishes 
are not infallible. Suppose you craved the for- 
bidden ? ” 

She looked over at him archly, but he jerked 
his face farther away. Then he spoke out with 
the impulse to get away from her question : 

‘‘ I could stand to be worsted by great things. 
But the little ones, the low, the coarse, the 
trivial! Ever since I was here last — beginning 
that very night — I have been struggling like 
a beast with his foot in a trap. I don’t mean 
Amy 1 ” he cried apologetically. 

^‘I’m glad you’ve discovered there are little 
things,” she replied. I had feared you might 
never find that out. I’m not sure yet that you 
have. One of your great troubles is that every- 
thing in life looks too large to you, too serious, 
too important. You fight the gnats of the 
world as you fought your panther. With you 
everything is a mortal combat. You run every 
butterfly down and break it on an iron wheel ; 
after you have broken it, it doesn’t matter: 
everything is as it was before, except that you 


The Choir Invisible 259 

have lost time and strength. The only things 
that need trouble us very much are not the 
things it is right to conquer, but the things 
it is wrong to conquer. If you ever conquer 
in yourself anything that is right, that will be 
a real trouble for you as long as you live — and 
for me ! ” 

He turned quickly and sat facing her, the 
muscles of his face moving convulsively. She 
did not look at him, but went on : 

‘‘The last time you were here, you told me 
that I did not appreciate Amy ; that I could 
not do her justice ; but that no woman could 
ever understand why a man loved any other 
woman.” 

“Did I say that.?” he muttered remorsefully. 

“ It was because you did not appreciate her 
— it was because you would never be able to 
do her justice — that I was so opposed to the 
marriage. And this was largely a question of 
little things. I knew perfectly well that as 
soon as you married Amy, you would begin 
to expect her to act as though she were made 
of iron : so many pieces, so many wheels, so 
many cogs, so many revolutions. All the in- 
evitable little things that make up the most of 


26 o 


The Choir Invisible 


her life — that make up so large a part of every 
woman*s life — the little moods, the little play, 
little changes, little tempers and inconsistencies 
and contradictions and falsities and hypocrisies 
which come every morning and go every night, 
— all these would soon have been to you — oh ! 
Fm afraid they’d have been as big as a herd of 
buffalo ! There would have been a bull fight 
for every foible.” 

She laughed out merrily, but she did not look 
at him. 

** Yes,” she continued, trying to drain his cup 
for him, since he would not do it himself, ‘‘ you 
are the last man in the world to do a woman 
like Amy justice. I’m afraid you will never do 
justice to any woman, unless you change a good 
deal and learn a good deal. Perhaps no woman 
will ever understand — except me.” 

She looked up at him now with the clearest 
fondness in her exquisite eyes. 

With a groan he suddenly leaned over and 
buried his face in his hands. His hat fell over 
on the grass. Her knitting dropped to her lap, 
and one of her hands went out quickly toward 
his big head, heavy with its shaggy reddish 
mass of hair, which had grown long during his 


The Choir Invisible 


261 

sickness. But at the first touch she quickly 
withdrew it, and stooping over picked up his 
hat and put it on her knees, and sat beside 
him silent and motionless. 

He straightened himself up a moment later, 
and keeping his face turned away reached for 
his hat and drew it down over his eyes. 

can’t tell you! You don’t understand!” 
he said in a broken voice. 

I understand everything. Amy has told 
me — poor little Amy! She is not wholly to 
blame. I blame you more. You may have 
been in love with your idea of her, but any- 
thing like that idea she never has been and 
never will be ; and who is responsible for your 
idea, then, but yourself.? It is a mistake that 
many a man makes ; and when the woman disap- 
points him, he blames her, and deserts her or 
makes her life a torment. Of course a woman 
may make the same mistake; but, as a rule, 
women are better judges of men than men 
are of women. Besides, if they find them- 
selves mistaken, they bear their disappointment 
better and show it less : they alone know their 
tragedy ; it is the unperceived that kills.” 

The first tears that he had ever seen gath- 


262 


The Choir Invisible 


ered and dimmed her eyes. She was too proud 
either to acknowledge them or to hide them. 
Her lids fell quickly to curtain them in, and 
the lashes received them in their long, thick 
fringes. But she had suffered herself to go 
too far. 

*‘Ah, if you had loved her! loved her!’' she 
cried with an intensity of passion, a weary, 
immeasurable yearning, that seemed to come 
from a life in death. The strength of that cry 
struck him as a rushing wind strikes a young 
eagle on the breast, lifting him from his rock 
and setting him afloat on the billows of a rising 
storm. His spirit mounted the spirit of her 
unmated confession, rode it as its master, ex- 
ulted in it as his element and his home. But 
the stricken man remained motionless on the 
bench a few feet from the woman, looking 
straight across the garden, with his hands 
clinched about his knees, his hat hiding his 
eyes, his jaws set sternly with the last grip 
of resolution. 

It was some time before either spoke. Then 
her voice was very quiet. 

**You found out your mistake in time; sup- 
pose it had been too late? But this is all so 


The Choir Invisible 


263 


sad ; we will never speak of it again. Only 
you ought to feel that from this time you can 
go on with the plans of your life uninterrupted. 
Begin with all this as a small defeat that means 
larger victory! There is no entanglement now, 
not a drawback ; what a future ! It does look 
as though you might now have everything that 
you set your heart on.” 

She glanced up at him with a mournful smile, 
and taking the knitting which had lain forgotten 
in her lap leaned over again and measured the 
stitches upon his wrist. 

“ When do you start ” she asked, seeing a 
terrible trouble gathering in his face and re- 
solved to draw his thoughts to other things. 

“Next week.” 

The knitting fell again. 

“And you have allowed all this time to go 
by without coming to see us ! You are to come 
every day till you go : promise I ” 

He had been repeating that he would not 
trust himself to come at all again, except to 
say good-bye. 

“ I can’t promise that.” 

“ But we want you so much 1 The major 
wants you. I want you more than the major. 


The Choir Invisible 


264 

Why should meeting Amy be so hard? Re> 
member how long it will be before you get 
back. When will you be back?’' 

He was thinking it were better never. 

“ It is uncertain,” he said. 

“I shall begin to look for you as soon as 
you are gone. I can hear your horse’s feet 
now, rustling in the leaves of October. But 
what will become of me till then ? Ah, you 
don’t begin to realize how much you are to 
me!” 

‘‘ Oh ! ” 

He stretched his arms out into vacancy and 
folded them again quickly. 

“I’d better go.” 

He stood up and walked several paces into 
the garden, where he feigned to be looking at 
the work she had left. Was he to break down 
now? Was the strength which he had re- 
lied on in so many temptations to fail him 
now, when his need was sorest ? 

In a few minutes he wheeled round to the 
bench and stopped full before her, no longer 
avoiding her eyes. She had taken up the book 
which he had laid on his end of the seat and 
was turning the pages. 


The Choir Invisible 


265 


** Have you read it ? ” 

“ Over and over.” 

“Ah ! I knew I could trust you ! You never 
disappoint. Sit down a little while.” 

“ I’d — better go ! ” 

“ And haven’t you a word } Bring this book 
back to me in silence ? After all I said to you } 
I want to know how you feel about it — all 
your thoughts.” 

She looked up at him with a reproachful 
smile — 

The blood had rushed guiltily into his face,, 
and she seeing this, without knowing what it 
meant, the blood rushed into hers. 

“I don’t understand,” she said proudly and 
coldly, dropping her eyes and dropping her 
head a little forward before him, and soon 
becoming very pale, as from a death-wound. 

He stood before her, trembling, trying to 
speak, trying not to speak. Then he turned 
and strode rapidly away. 


XVIII 


The next morning the parson was standing 
before his scant congregation of Episcopalians. 

It was the first body of these worshippers 
gathered together in the wilderness mainly from 
the seaboard aristocracy of the Church of Eng- 
land. A small frame building on the northern 
slope of the wide valley served them for a 
meeting-house. No mystical half-lights there 
but the mystical half-lights of Faith ; no win- 
dows but the many-hued windows of Hope ; no 
arches but the vault of Love. What more did 
those men and women need in that land, over- 
shadowed always by the horror of quick or 
waiting death 

In addition to his meagre flock many an un- 
claimed goat of the world fell into that meek 
valley-path of Sunday mornings and came to 
hear, if not to heed, the voice of this quiet 
shepherd ; so that now, as he stood delivering 
his final exhortation, his eyes ranged over wild, 
lawless, desperate countenances, rimming him 
266 


The Choir Invisible 


267 


darkly around. They glowered in at him 
through the door, where some sat upon the 
steps ; others leaned in at the windows on each 
side of the room. Over the closely packed 
rough heads of these he could see others loung- 
ing farther away on the grass beside their rifles, 
listening, laughing and talking. Beyond these 
stretched near fields green with maize, and 
cabins embosomed in orchards and gardens. 
Once a far-off band of little children rushed 
across his field of vision, playing at Indian war- 
fare and leaving in the bright air a cloud of dust 
from an old Indian war trail. 

As he observed it all — this singularly mixed 
concourse of God-fearing men and women and 
of men and women who feared neither God nor 
man nor devil — as he beheld the young fields 
and the young children and the sweet transition 
of the whole land from bloodshed to innocence, 
the recollection of his mission in it and of the 
message of his Master brought out upon his 
cold, bleak, beautiful face the light of the 
Divine : so from a dark valley one may some- 
time have seen a snow-clad peak of the Alps 
lit up with the rays of the hidden sun. 

He had chosen for his text the words “ My 


268 


The Choir Invisible 


peace I give unto you,” and long before the 
closing sentences were reached, his voice was 
floating out with silvery, flute-like clearness on 
the still air of the summer morning, holding 
every soul, however unreclaimed, to intense 
and reverential silence : 

It is now twenty years since you scaled the 
mountains and hewed your path into this wil- 
derness, never again to leave it. Since then 
you have known but war. As I look into your 
faces, I see the scar of many a wound ; but more 
than the wounds I see are the wounds I do not 
see: of the body as well as of the spirit — the 
lacerations of sorrow, the strokes of bereave- 
ment. So that perhaps not one of you here 
but bears some brave visible or invisible sign 
of this awful past and of his share in the com- 
mon strife. Twenty years are a long time to 
fight enemies of any kind, a long time to hold 
out against such as you have faced ; and had 
you not been a mighty people sprung from the 
loins of a mighty race, no one of you would be 
here this day to worship the God of your fathers 
in the faith of your fathers. The victory upon 
which you are entering at last is never the 
reward of the feeble, the cowardly, the faint- 


The Choir Invisible 269 

heaited. Out of your strength alone you have 
won your peace. 

But, O my brethren, while your land is now 
at peace, are you at peace 1 In the name of 
my Master, look each of you into his heart and 
answer : Is it not still a wilderness } full of the 
wild beasts of the appetites ? the favourite hunt- 
ing-ground of the passions.^ And is each of you, 
tried and faithful and fearless soldier that he 
may be on every other field, is each of you doing 
anything to conquer this } 

‘^My cry to-day then is the war-cry of the 
spirit. Subdue the wilderness within you ! Step 
by step, little by little, as you have fought your 
way across this land from the Eastern mountains 
to the Western river, driven out every enemy 
and now hold it as your own, begin likewise to 
take possession of the other until in the end 
you may rule it also. If you are feeble ; if faint- 
hearted ; if you do not bring into your lonely, 
silent, unwitnessed battles every virtue that you 
have relied on in this outward warfare of twenty 
years, you may never hope to come forth con- 
querors. By your strength, your courage, 
patience, watchfulness, constancy, — by the in- 
most will and beholden face of victory you are 


270 


The Choir Invisible 


to overmaster the evil within yourselves as you 
have overmastered the peril in Kentucky. 

Then in truth you may dwell in green and 
tranquil pastures, where the will of God broods 
like summer light. Then you may come to 
realize the meaning of this promise of our Lord, 
‘My peace I give unto you’: it is the gift of 
His peace to those alone who have learned to 
hold in quietness their land of the spirit.” 

White, cold, aflame with holiness, he stood 
before them ; and every beholder, awe-stricken 
by the vision of that face, of a surety was think- 
ing that this man’s life was behind his speech : 
whether in ease or agony, he had found for his 
nature that victory of rest that was never to be 
taken from him. 

But even as he stood thus, the white splen- 
dour faded from his countenance, leaving it 
shadowed with care. In one corner of the 
room, against the wall, shielding his face from 
the light of the window with his big black hat 
and the palm of his hand, sat the school-master. 
He was violently flushed, his eyes swollen and 
cloudy, his hair tossed, his linen rumpled, his 
posture bespeaking wretchedness and self-aban- 
donment. Always in preaching the parson had 


The Choir Invisible 


271 

looked for the face of his friend ; always it had 
been his mainstay, interpreter, steadfast advo- 
cate in every plea for perfection of life. But 
to-day it had been kept concealed from him ; 
nor until he had reached his closing exhorta- 
tion, had the school-master once looked him in 
the eye, and he had done so then in a most 
remarkable manner: snatching the hat from 
before his face, straightening his big body up, 
and transfixing him with an expression of such 
resentment and reproach, that among all the 
wild faces before him, he could see none to 
match this one for disordered and evil passion. 
If he could have harboured a conviction so mon- 
strous, he would have said that his words had 
pierced the owner of that face like a spear 
and that he was writhing under the torture. 

As soon as he had pronounced the benedic- 
tion he looked toward the corner again, but 
the school-master had already left the room. 
Usually he waited until the others were gone 
and the two men walked homeward together, 
discussing the sermon. 

To-day the others slowly scattered, and the 
parson sat alone at the upper end of the room 
disappointed and troubled. 


2/2 


The Choir Invisible 


John strode up to the door. 

‘'Are you ready?” he asked in a curt un- 
natural voice. 

“Ah!” The parson sprang up gladly. ‘T 
was hoping you’d come!” 

They started slowly off along the path, John 
walking unconsciously in it, the parson stum- 
bling along through the grass and weeds on one 
side. It had been John’s unvarying wont to 
yield the path to him. 

“It is easy to preach^ he muttered with 
gloomy, sarcastic emphasis. 

“ If you tried it once, you might think it easier 
to practise,” retorted the parson, laughing. 

“It might be easier to one who is not 
tempted.” 

“It might be easier to one who is. No man 
is tempted beyond his strength, but a sermon 
is often beyond his powers. I let you know, 
young man, that a homily may come harder 
than a virtue.” 

“ How can you stand up and preach as you’ve 
been preaching, and then come out of the church 
and laugh about it!” cried John angrily. 

“I’m not laughing about what I preached 
on,” replied the parson with gentleness. 


The Choir Invisible 


273 


**You are in high spirits! You are gay! 
You are full of levity!” 

I am full of gladness. I am happy : is that 
a sin? ” 

John wheeled on him, stopping short, and 
pointing back to the church : 

“Suppose there’d been a man in that room 
who was trying to conquer some temptation — 
more terrible than you’ve ever known anything 
about. You’d made him feel that you were 
speaking straight at him — bidding him do right 
where it was so much easier to do wrong. You 
had helped him ; he had waited to see you alone, 
hoping to get more help. Then suppose he had 
found you as you are now — full of your glad- 
ness! He wouldn’t have believed in you ! He’d 
have been hardened.” 

“If he’d been the right kind of man,” replied 
the parson, quietly facing an arraignment that 
had the rancour of denunciation, “he ought to 
have been more benefited by the sight of a 
glad man than the sound of a sad sermon. 
He’d have found in me a man who practises 
what he preaches: I have conquered my wil- 
derness. But I think,” he added more gravely, 
“that if any such soul had come to me in his 


274 


The Choir Invisible 


trouble, I could have helped him : if he had let 
me know what it was, he would have found that 
I could understand, could sympathize. Still, 
I don’t see why you should condemn my con- 
duct by the test of imaginary cases. I suppose 
I’m happy now because I’m glad to be with 
youC and the parson looked the school-master 
a little reproachfully in the eyes. 

*‘And do you think I have no troubles.^” said 
John, his lips trembling. He turned away and 
the parson walked beside him. 

“You have two troubles to my certain know- 
ledge,” said he in the tone of one bringing for- 
ward a piece of critical analysis that was rather 
mortifying to exhibit. “ The one is a woman and 
the other is John Calvin. If it’s Amy, throw it 
off and be a man. If it’s Calvinism, throw it off 
and become an Episcopalian.” He laughed out 
despite himself. 

“Did you ever love a woman asked John 
gruffly. 

“Many a one — in the state of the first Adam!” 

“That’s the reason you threw it off: many a 
one!” 

“ Don’t you know,” inquired the parson with 
an air of exegetical candour, “ that no man can 


The Choir Invisible 


275 


be miserable because some woman or other has 
flirted his friend ? That’s the one trouble that 
every man laughs at — when it happens in his 
neighbourhood, not in his own house!” 

The school-master made no reply. 

‘*Or if it is Calvin,” continued the parson, 
thank God, I can now laugh at him, and so 
should you ! Answer me one question : during 
the sermon, weren’t you thinking of the case 
of a man born in a wilderness of temptations 
that he is foreordained never to conquer, and 
then foreordained to eternal damnation because 
he didn’t conquer it } ” 

“ No — no 

‘*Well, you’d better’ ve been thinking about 
it I For that’s what you believe. And that’s 
what makes life so hard and bitter and gloomy 
to you. I know I I carried Calvinism around 
within me once : it was like an uncorked ink- 
bottle in a rolling snowball : the farther you go, 
the blacker you get ! Admit it now,” he con- 
tinued in his highest key of rarefied persistency, 
admit that you were mourning over the babies 
in your school that will have to go to hell I 
You’d better be getting some of your own : 
the Lord will take care of other people’s I Go 


276 


The Choir Invisible 


to see Mrs. Falconer ! See all you can of her. 
There’s a woman to bring you around ! ” 

They had reached the little bridge over the 
clear, swift Elkhorn. Their paths diverged. 
John stopped at his companion’s last words, 
and stood looking at him with some pity. 

“I thank you for your sermon,” he said 
huskily; “I hope to get some help from that. 
But you ! — you are making things harder for 
me every word you utter. You don’t under- 
stand and I can’t tell you.” 

He took the parson’s cool delicate hand in his 
big hot one. 

Alone in the glow of the golden dusk of that 
day he was sitting outside his cabin on the 
brow of the hill, overlooking the town in the 
valley. How peaceful it lay in the Sunday 
evening light ! The burden of the parson’s 
sermon weighed more heavily than ever on his 
spirit. He had but to turn his eye down the 
valley and there, flashing in the sheen of sun- 
set, flowed the great spring, around the margin 
of which the first group of Western hunters had 
camped for the night and given the place its 
name from one of the battle-fields of the Revolu- 


The Choir Invisible 


277 

tion ; up the valley he could see the roof under 
which the Virginia aristocracy of the Church of 
England had consecrated their first poor shrine. 
What history lay between the finding of that 
spring and the building of that altar ! Not the 
winning of the wilderness simply ; not alone its 
peace. That westward penetrating wedge of 
iron-browed, iron-muscled, iron-hearted men, 
who were now beginning to be known as the 
Kentuckians, had not only cleft a road for 
themselves ; they had opened a fresh highway 
for the tread of the nation and found a vaster 
heaven for the Star of Empire. Already this 
youthful gigantic West was beginning to make 
its voice heard from Quebec to New Orleans ; 
while beyond the sea the three greatest king- 
doms of Europe had grave and troubled thoughts 
of the on-rushing power it foretokened and the 
unimaginably splendid future for the Anglo- 
Saxon race that it forecast. 

He recalled the ardour with which he had 
followed the tramp of those wild Westerners ; 
footing it alone from the crest of the Cumber- 
land ; subsisting on the game he could kill by 
the roadside ; sleeping at night on his rifle in 
some thicket of underbrush or cane ; resolute to 


278 


The Choir Invisible 


make his way to this new frontier of the new 
republic in the new world ; open his school, read 
law, and begin his practice, and cast his destiny 
in with its heroic people. 

And now this was the last Sunday in a long 
time, perhaps forever, that he should see it all 
— the valley, the town, the evening land, rest- 
ing in its peace. Before the end of another 
week his horse would be climbing the ranges 
of the Alleghanies, bearing him on his way to 
Mount Vernon and thence to Philadelphia. By 
outward compact he was going on one mission 
for the Transylvania Library Committee and on 
another from his Democratic Society to the 
political Clubs of the East. But in his own 
soul he knew he was going likewise because it 
would give him the chance to fight his own 
battle out, alone and far away. 

Fight it out here, he felt that he never could. 
He could neither live near her and not see her, 
nor see her and not betray the truth. His whole 
life had been a protest against the concealment 
either of his genuine dislikes or his genuine 
affections. How closely he had come to the 
tragedy of a confession, she to the tragedy of 
an understanding, the day before ! Her deathly 


The Choir Invisible 


m 

pallor had haunted him ever since — that look 
of having suffered a terrible v^round. Perhaps 
she understood already. 

Then let her understand ! Then at least he 
could go away better satisfied : if he never came 
back, she would know : every year of that long 
separation, her mind would be bearing him the 
pardoning companionship that every woman 
must yield the man who has loved her, and still 
loves her, wrongfully and hopelessly : of itself 
that knowledge would be a great deal to him 
during all those years. 

Struggle against it as he would, the purpose 
was steadily gaining ground within him to see 
her and if she did not now know everything, 
then to tell her the truth. The consequences 
would be a tragedy, but might it not be a 
tragedy of another kind .•* For there were 
darker moments when he probed strange re- 
cesses of life for him in the possibility that 
his confession might open up a like confession 
from her. He had once believed Amy to be 
true when she was untrue. Might he not be 
deceived here 1 Might she not appear true, but 
in reality be untrue ? If he were successfully 
concealing his love from her, might she not 


28 o 


The Choir Invisible 


be successfully concealing her love from him ? 
And if they found each other out, what then ? 

At such moments all through him like an 
alarm bell sounded her warning : The only 

things that need trouble us very nmch are not the 
things it is right to conquer but the things it is 
wrong to conquer. If you ever conqicer anything 
in yourself that is rights that will be a real 
trouble for you as long as you live — and for me T' 

Had she meant this ? But whatever mood 
was uppermost, of one thing he now felt as- 
sured : that the sight of her made his silence 
more difficult. He had fancied that her mere 
presence, her purity, her constancy, her lofti- 
ness of nature would rebuke and rescue him 
from the evil in himself : it had only stamped 
upon this the consciousness of reality. He 
had never even realized until he saw her the 
last time how beautiful she was ; the change 
in himself had opened his eyes to this ; and her 
greater tenderness toward him in their talk of 
his departure, her dependence on his friendship, 
her coming lonelines.s, the sense of a tragedy 
in her life — all these sweet half-mute appeals 
to sympathy and affection had rioted in his 
memory every moment since. 


The Choir Invisible 


28 X 

Therefore it befell that the parson’s sermon 
of the morning had dropped like living coals on 
his conscience. It had sounded that familiar, 
lifelong, best-loved, trumpet call of duty — the 
old note of joy in his strength rightly and 
valiantly to be put forth — which had always 
kindled him and had always been his boast. 
All the afternoon those living coals of divine re- 
monstrance had been burning into him deeper 
and deeper but in vain : they could only torture, 
not persuade. For the first time in his life he 
had met face to face the fully aroused worst 
passions of his own stubborn, defiant, intracta- 
ble nature : they too loved victory and were 
saying they would have it. 

One by one the cabins disappeared in the 
darkness. One by one the stars bloomed out 
yellow in their still meadows. Over the vast 
green sea of the eastern wilderness the moon 
swung her silvery lamp, and up the valley floated 
a wide veil of mist bedashed with silvery light. 

The parson climbed the crest of the hill, sat 
down, laid his hat on the grass, and slipped his 
long sensitive fingers backward over his shining 
hair. Neither man spoke at first : their friend- 
ship put them at ease. Nor did the one notice 


282 


The Choir Invisible 


the shrinking and dread which was the other’s 
only welcome. 

“ Did you see the Falconers this morning } ” 

The parson’s tone was searching and troubled 
and gentler than it had been earlier that day. 

“No.” 

“ They were looking for you. They thought 
you'd gone home and said they’d go by for you. 
They expected you to go out with them to dim 
ner. Haven’t you been there to-day } ” 

“ No.” 

“ I certainly supposed you’d go. I know they 
looked for you and must have been disappointed. 
Isn’t this your last Sunday } ” 

“ Yes.” 

He answered absently. He was thinking 
that if she was looking for him, then she had 
not understood and their relation still rested on 
the old innocent footing. Whatever explanation 
of his conduct and leave-taking the day before 
she had devised, it had not been in his dis- 
favour. In all probability, she had referred it, 
as she had referred everything else, to his affair 
with Amy. His conscience smote him at the 
thought of her indestructible trust in him. 

“ If this IS your last Sunday,” resumed the 


The Choir Invisible 


283 


parson in a voice rather plaintive, “ then this is 
our last Sunday night together. And that was 
my last sermon. Well, it’s not a bad one to 
take with you. By the time you get back, you’ll 
thank me more for it than you did this morning 
— • if you heed it.” 

There was another silence before he continued, 
musingly : 

‘‘What an expression a sermon will some- 
times bring out on a man’s face ! While I was 
preaching, I saw many a thing that no man 
knew I saw. It was as though I were crossing 
actual wildernesses ; I met the wild beasts of 
different souls, I crept up on the lurking savages 
of the passions. I believe some of those men 
would have liked to confess to me. I wish they 
had.” 

He forbore to speak of John’s black look, 
though it was of this that he was most griev- 
ously thinking and would have led the way to 
have explained. But no answer came. 

“ There was one face with no hidden guilt in 
it, no shame. I read into the depths of that 
clear mind. It said : ‘ I have conquered my 
wilderness.’ I have never known another such 
woman as Mrs. Falconer. She never speaks of 


284 


The Choir Invisible 


herself ; but when I am with her, I feel that the 
struggles of my life have been nothing.’* 

“ Yes,” he continued, out of kindness try- 
ing to take no notice of his companion’s silence, 
“ she holds in quietness her land of the spirit ; 
but there are battle-fields in her nature that fill 
me with awe by their silence. I’d dread to be 
the person to cause her any further trouble in 
this world.” 

The school-master started up, went into the 
cabin, and quickly came out again. The parson, 
absorbed in his reflections, had not noticed : 

You’ve thought I’ve not sympathized with 
you in your affair with Amy. It’s true. But 
if you’d ever loved this woman and failed, I could 
have sympathized.” 

“Why don’t you raise the money to build a 
better church by getting up a lottery } ” asked 
John, breaking in harshly upon the parson’s 
gentleness. 

The question brought on a short discussion 
of this method of aiding schools and churches, 
then much in vogue. The parson rather favoured 
the plan (and it is known that afterwards a bet- 
ter church was built for him through this de- 
vice); but his companion bore but a listless 


The Choir Invisible 


285 


part in the talk : he was balancing the chances, 
the honour and the dishonour, in a lottery of 
life. 

'‘You are not like yourself to-day,” said the 
parson reproachfully after silence had come on 
again. 

"I know it,” replied John freely, as if awak- 
ing at last. 

"Well, each of us has his troubles. Some- 
times I have likened the human race to a 
caravan of camels crossing a desert — each with 
a sore on his hump and each with his load so 
placed as to rub that sore. It is all right for 
the back to bear its burden, but I don’t think 
there should have been any sore ! ” 

" Let me ask you a question,” said John, sud- 
denly and earnestly. "Have there ever been 
days in your life when, if you’d been the camel, 
you’d have thrown the load and driver off .J*” 

" Ah ! ” said the parson keenly, but gave no 
answer. 

"Have there ever been days when you’d 
rather have done wrong than right } ” 

"Yes; there have been such days — when I 
was young and wild.” The confession was re- 
luctant. 


286 


The Choir Invisible 


**Have you ever had a trouble, and every- 
body around you fell upon you in the belief 
that it was something else ? ” 

'‘That has happened to me — I suppose to all 
of us.” 

“ Were you greatly helped by their misunder- 
standing you } ” 

“ I can’t say that I was.” 

“You would have been glad for them to 
know the truth, but you didn’t choose to tell 
them ? ” 

“Yes; I have gone through such an experi- 
ence.” 

“ So that their sympathy was in effect ridicu- 
lous.?” 

“ That is true also.” 

“If you have been through all this,” said 
John conclusively, “then without knowing any- 
thing more, you can understand why I am not 
like myself, as you say, and haven’t been lately.” 

The parson moved his chair over beside the 
school-master’s and took one of his hands in 
both of his own, drawing it into his lap. 

“John,” he said with affection, “I’ve been 
wrong : forgive me ! And I can respect your 
silence. But don’t let anything come between 


The Choir Invisible 


287 


us and keep it from me. One question now on 
this our last Sunday night together: Have you 
anything against me in this world } ” 

Not one thing ! Have you anything against 
me.?” 

“Not one thing !” 

Neither spoke for a while. Then the parson 
resumed : 

“ I not only have nothing against you, but 
I’ve something to say; we might never meet 
hereafter. You remember the woman who broke 
the alabaster box for the feet of the Saviour 
while he was living — that most beautiful of 
all the appreciations .? And you know what we 
do.? Let our fellow-beings carry their crosses 
to their Calvarys, and after each has suffered 
his agony and entered into his peace, we go 
out to him and break our alabaster boxes above 
his stiff cold feet. I have always hoped that 
my religion might enable me to break my ala- 
baster box for the living who alone can need 
it — and who always do need it. Here is mine 
for your feet, John : Of all the men I have ever 
known, you are the most sincere; of them all I 
would soonest pick upon you to do what is 
right; of them all you have the cleanest face, 


288 


The Choir Invisible 


because you have the most innocent heart ; of 
them all you have the highest notions of what a 
man may do and be in this life. I have drawn 
upon your strength ever since I knew you. 
You have a great deal. It is fortunate; you 
will need a great deal ; for the world will always 
be a battle-field to you, but the victory will be 
worth the fighting. And my last words to you 
are : fight it out to the end ; don’t compromise 
with evil ; don’t lower your ideals or your aims. 
If it can be any help to you to know it, I shall 
always be near you in spirit when you are in 
trouble; if you ever need me, I will come; and 
if my poor prayers can ever bring you a bless- 
ing, you shall have that.” 

The parson turned his calm face up toward 
the firmament and tears glistened in his eyes. 
Then perhaps from the old habit and need of 
following a sermon with a hymn, he said quite 
simply : 

“Would you like a little music.? It is the 
Good-bye of the Flute to you and a pleasant 
journey.” 

The school-master’s head had dropped quickly 
upon his arms, which were crossed over the 
back of his chair. While the parson was prais- 


The Choir Invisible 


289 


ing him, he had put out his hand two or 
three times with wretched, imploring gestures. 
Keeping his face still hidden, he moved his 
head now in token of assent ; and out upon the 
stillness of the night floated the Farewell of the 
Flute. 

But no sermon, nor friendship, nor music, 
nor voice of conscience, nor voice of praise, nor 
ideals, nor any other earthly thing could stand 
this day against the evil that was in him. The 
parson had scarce gone away through the misty 
beams before he sprang up and seized his hat. 

There was no fog out on the clearing. He 
could not have said why he had come. He 
only knew that he was there in the garden 
where he had parted from her the day before. 
He sat on the bench where they had talked so 
often, he strolled among her plants. How clear 
in the moonlight every leaf of the dark green 
little things was, many of them holding white 
drops of dew on their tips and edges ! How 
plain the last shoe-prints where she had worked ! 
How peaceful the whole scene in every direc- 
tion, how sacredly at rest ! And the cabin up 
there at the end of the garden where they were 
sleeping side by side — how the moon poured its 
u 


290 


The Choir Invisible 


strongest light upon that: his eye could never 
get away from it. So closely a man might live 
with a woman in this seclusion ! So entirely 
she must be his ! 

His passions leaped like dogs against their 
chains when brought too near. They began to 
draw him toward the cabin until at last he had 
come opposite to it, his figure remaining hidden 
behind the fence and under the heavy shadow 
of a group of the wilderness trees. Then it was 
that taking one step further, he drew back. 

The low window of the cabin was open and 
she was sitting there near the foot of her bed, 
perfectly still and looking out into the night. 
Her face rested in one palm, her elbow on the 
window sill. Her nightgown had slipped down 
from her arm. The only sleepless thing in all 
the peace of that summer night : the yearning 
image of mated loneliness. 

He was so close that he could hear the loud 
regular breathing of a sleeper on the bed just 
inside the shadow. Once the breathing stopped 
abruptly ; and a moment later, as though in 
reply to a command, he heard her say without 
turning her head : 

I am coming ” 


The Choir Invisible 


291 


The voice was sweet and dutiful; but to an 
ear that could have divined everything, so dead 
worn away with weariness. 

Then he saw an arm put forth. Then he 
heard the shutter being fastened on the inside. 


XIX 


The closing day of school had come ; and 
although he had waited in impatience for the 
end, it was with a lump in his throat that he sat 
behind the desk and ruler for the last time and 
looked out on the gleeful faces of the children. 
No more toil and trouble between them and him 
from this time on ; a dismissal, and as far as he 
was concerned the scattering of the huddled 
lambkins to the wide pastures and long cold 
mountain sides of the world. He had grown 
so fond of them and he had grown so used to 
teach them by talking to them, that his speech 
overflowed. But it had been his unbroken wont 
to keep his troubles out of the schoolroom ; and 
although the thought never left him of the 
other parting to be faced that day, he spoke 
out bravely and cheerily, with a smile : 

“This is the last day of school, and you know 
that to-morrow I am going away and may never 
come back. Whether I do or not, I shall never 


292 


The Choir Invisible 


293 

teach again, so that I am now saying good-bye 
to you for life. 

What I wish to impress upon you once more 
is the kind of men and women your fathers and 
mothers were and the kind of men and women 
you must become to be worthy of them. I am 
not speaking so much to those of you whose 
parents have not been long in Kentucky as to 
those whose parents were the first to fight for 
the land until it was safe for others to follow 
and share it. Let me tell you that nothing like 
that was ever done before in all this world. 
And if, as I sit here, I can’t help seeing that 
this one of you has no father and this one no 
mother and this one neither father nor mother 
and that almost none of you have both, still 
I cannot help saying. You ought to be happy 
children ! not that you have lost your parents, 
but that you have had such parents to lose and 
to remember ! 

All of you are still too young to know fully 
what they have done and how the whole world 
will some day speak of them. Still, you can 
understand some things. For nowadays, when 
you go to your homes at night, you can lie down 
and sleep without fear or danger. 


294 


The Choir Invisible 


“ And in the mornings your fathers go off to 
the fields to their work, your mothers go off to 
theirs, you go off to yours, feeling sure that you 
will all come together at night again. Some of 
you can remember when this was not so. Your 
father would put his arms around you in the 
morning and you would never see him again ; 
your mother kissed you, and waved her hand to 
you as she went out of the gate ; and you never 
knew what became of her afterwards. 

“And don’t you recollect how you little babes 
in the wilderness could never go anywhere } If 
you heard wild turkeys gobbling just inside the 
forest, or an owl hooting, or a paroquet scream- 
ing, or a fawn bleating, you were warned never 
to go there ; it was the trick of the Indians. 
You could never go near a clump of high weeds, 
or a patch of cane, or a stump, or a fallen tree. 
You must not go to the sugar camp, to get a 
good drink, or to a salt lick for a pinch of salt, 
or to the field for an ear of corn, or even to the 
spring for a bucket of water : so that you could 
have neither bread nor water nor sugar nor salt. 
Always, always, it was the Indians. If you 
cried in the night, your mother came over to 
you and whispered : ‘ Hush ! they are coming) 


The Choir Invisible 


295 

They will get you ! ’ And you forgot your pain 
and clung to her neck and listened. 

Now you are let alone, you go farther and 
farther away from your homes, you can play 
hide-and-seek in the canebrakes, you can explore 
the woods, you fish and you hunt, you are free 
for the land is safe. 

And then only think, that by the time you 
are men and women, Kentucky will no longer be 
the great wilderness it still is. There will be 
thousands and thousands of people scattered 
over it ; and the forest will be cut down — can you 
ever believe that ? — cut through and through, 
leaving some trees here and some trees there. 
And the cane will be cut down : can you believe 
that ? And instead of buffalo and wild-cats 
and bears and wolves and panthers there will 
be flocks of the whitest sheep, with little lambs 
frisking about on the green spring meadows. 
And under the big shady trees in the pastures 
there will be herds of red cattle, so gentle 
and with backs so soft and broad that you 
could almost stretch yourselves out and go 
to sleep on them, and they would never stop 
chewing their cuds. Only think of the hun- 
dreds of orchards with their apple-blossoms 


296 


The Choir Invisible 


and of the big, ripe, golden apples on the trees 
in the fall ! It will be one of the quietest, 
gentlest lands that a people ever owned ; and 
this is the gift of your fathers who fought 
for it and of your mothers who fought for it 
also. And you must never forget that you 
would never have had such fathers, had you 
not had such mothers to stand by them and 
to die with them. 

*‘This is what I have wished to teach you 
more than anything in your books — that you 
may become men and women worthy of them 
and of what they have left you. But while 
being the bravest kind of men and women, you 
should try also to be gentle men and gentle 
women. You boys must get over your rudeness 
and your roughness ; that is all right in you now 
but it would be all wrong in you afterwards. 
And the last and the best thing I have to say to 
you is be good boys and grow up to be good men ! 
That sounds very plain and common but I can 
wish you nothing better for there is nothing 
better. As for my little girls, they are good 
enough as they are ! 

“ I have talked a long time. God bless you 
every one. I wish you long and happy lives and 


The Choir Invisible 


297 


I hope we may meet again. And now all of you 
must come and shake hands with me and tell 
me good-bye.” 

They started forward and swarmed toward 
him ; only, as the foremost of them rose and hid 
her from sight, little Jennie, with one mighty 
act of defiant joy, hurled her arithmetic out 
of the window; and a chubby-cheeked veteran 
on the end of the bench produced a big red 
apple from between his legs and went for it 
with a smack of gastric rapture that made his 
toes curl and sent his glance to the rafters. 
They swarmed on him, and he folded his arms 
around the little ones and kissed them ; the 
older boys, the warriors, brown and barefoot, 
stepping sturdily forward one by one, and hold- 
ing out a strong hand that closed on his and 
held it, their eyes answering his sometimes 
with clear calm trust and fondness, sometimes 
lowered and full of tears; other little hands 
resting unconsciously on each of his shoulders, 
waiting for their turns. Then there were 
softened echoes — gay voices, dying away in one 
direction and another, and then — himself alone 
in the room — school-master no longer. 

He waited till there was silence, sitting in his 


298 


The Choir Invisible 


old erect way behind his desk, the bright smile 
still on his face though his eyes were wet. 
Then, with the thought that now he was to 
take leave of her^ he suddenly leaned forward 
and buried his face on his arms. 


XX 


In the Country of the Spirit there is a certain 
high table-land that lies far on among the out- 
posts toward Eternity. Standing on that calm 
clear height, where the sun shines ever though 
it shines coldly, the wayfarer may look behind 
him at his own footprints of self-renunciation, 
below on his dark zones of storm, and forward 
to the final land where the mystery, the pain, 
and the yearning of his life will either be infi- 
nitely satisfied or infinitely quieted. But no 
man can write a description of this place for 
those who have never trodden it ; by those who 
have, no description is desired : their fullest 
speech is Silence. For here dwells the Love 
of which there has never been any confession, 
from which there is no escape, for which there 
is no hope : the love of a man for a woman who 
is bound to another, or the love of a woman for 
a man who is bound to another. Many there 
are who know what that means, and this is the 
reason why the land is always thronged. But 
299 


300 


The Choir Invisible 


in the throng no one signals another; to walk 
there is to be counted among the Unseen and 
the Alone. 

To this great wistful height of Silence he had 
struggled at last after all his days of rising and 
falling, of climbing and slipping back. It was 
no especial triumph for his own strength. His 
better strength had indeed gone into it, and the 
older rightful habitudes of mind that always 
mean so much to us when we are tried and 
tempted, and the old beautiful submission of 
himself to the established laws of the world. 
But more than what these had effected was 
what she herself had been to him and had done 
for him. Even his discovery of her at the win- 
dow that last night had had the effect of bidding 
him stand off ; for he saw there the loyalty and 
sacredness of wifehood that, however full of 
suffering, at least asked for itself the privilege 
and the dignity of suffering unnoticed. 

Thus he had come to realize that Life had 
long been leading him blindfold, until one re- 
cent day, snatching the bandage from his eyes, 
she had cried : Here is the parting of three 
ways, each way a tragedy : choose your way and 
your tragedy ! ” 


The Choir Invisible 


301 


If he confessed his love and found that she 
felt but friendship for him, there was the first 
tragedy. The wrong in him would lack the 
answering wrong in her, which sometimes, when 
the two are put together, so nearly makes up 
the right. From her own point of view, he 
would merely be offering her a delicate inef- 
faceable insult. If she had been the sort of 
woman by whose vanity every conquest is wel- 
comed as a tribute and pursued as an aim, he 
could never have cared for her at all. Thus 
while his love took its very origin from his 
belief of her nobility, he was premeditating the 
means of having her prove to him that this did 
not exist. 

If he told her everything and surprised her 
love for him, there was the second tragedy. 
For over there, beyond the scene of such a con- 
fession, he could not behold her as anything 
else than a fatally lowered woman. The agony 
of this, even as a possibility, overwhelmed him 
in advance. To require of her that she should 
have a nature of perfect loyalty and at the same 
time to ask her to pronounce her own falseness 
— what happiness could that bring to him ? If 
she could be faithless to one man because she 


302 


The Choir Invisible 


loved another, could she not be false to the 
second, if in time she grew to love a third ? 
Out of the depths even of his loss of her the 
terrible cry was wrung from him that no love 
could long be possible between him and any 
woman who was not free to love him. 

And so at last, with that mingling of selfish 
and unselfish motives, which is like the mixed 
blood of the heart itself, he had chosen the 
third tragedy : the silence that would at least 
leave each of them blameless. And so he had 
come finally to that high cold table-land where 
the sun of Love shines rather as the white 
luminary of another world than the red quick- 
ener of this. 

Over the lofty table-land of Kentucky the sky 
bent darkest blue, and was filled with wistful, 
silvery light that afternoon as he walked out 
to the Falconers’. His face had never looked 
so clear, so calm ; his very linen never so spot- 
less, or so careful about his neck and wrists; 
and his eyes held again their old beautiful light 
— saddened. 

From away off he could descry her, walking 
about the yard in the pale sunshine. He had 


The Choir Invisible 


303 


expected to find her preoccupied as usual; but 
to-day she was strolling restlessly to and fro in 
front of the house, quite near it and quite idle. 
When she saw him coming, scarce aware of her 
own actions, she went round the house and 
walked on quickly away from him. 

As he was following and passing the cabin, 
a hand was quickly put out and the shutter 
drawn partly to. 

How do you do! ” 

That hard, smooth, gay little voice ! 

^‘You mustn’t come here I And don’t you 
peep I When are you going } ” 

He told her. 

** To-morrow ! Why, have you forgotten that 
I’m married to-morrow ! Aren’t you coming } 
Upon my word ! I’ve given you to the widow 
Babcock, and you are to ride in the procession 
with her. She has promised me not to laugh 
once on the way or even to allude to anything 
cheerful! Be persuaded ! . . . Well, I’m sorry. 
I’ll have to give your place to Peter, I suppose. 
And I’ll tell the widow she can be natural and 
gay : Peter’ll not mind ! Good-bye ! I can’t 
shake hands with you.” 

Behind the house, at the foot of the sloping 


304 


The Choir Invisible 


hill, there was a spring such as every pioneer 
sought to have near his home; and a little 
lower down, in one corner of the yard, the 
water from this had broadened out into a small 
pond. Dark-green sedgy cane grew thick 
around half the margin. 

One March day some seasons before. Major 
Falconer had brought down with his rifle from 
out the turquoise sky a young lone-wandering 
swan. In those early days the rivers and ponds 
of the wilderness served as resting-places and 
feeding-grounds for these unnumbered birds in 
their long flights between the Southern waters 
and the Northern lakes. A wing of this one 
had been broken, and out of her wide heaven 
of freedom and light she had floated down his 
captive but with all her far-sweeping instincts 
throbbing on unabated. This pool had been 
the only thing to remind her since of the blue- 
breasted waves and the glad fellowship of her 
kind. On this she had passed her existence, 
with a cry in the night now and then that no 
one heard, a lifting of the wings that would 
never rise, an eye turned upward toward the 
turquoise sky across which familiar voices 
called to each other, called down, and were 
lost in the distance. 


The Choir Invisible 


305 


As he followed down the hill, she was stand- 
ing on the edge of the pond, watching the swan 
feeding in the edge of the cane. He took her 
hand without a word, and looked with clear un- 
faltering eyes down into her face, now swanlike 
in whiteness. 

She withdrew her hand and gave him the 
gloves which she was holding in the other. 

glad you thought enough of them to 
come for them.” 

“ I couldn’t come ! Don’t blame me ! ” 

understand! Only I might have helped 
you in your trouble. If a friend can’t do that 
— may not do that I But it is too late now! 
You start for Virginia to-morrow } ” 

‘‘To-morrow.” 

“And to-morrow Amy marries. I lose you 
both the same day I You are going straight 
to Mount Vernon.?” 

“Straight to Mount Vernon.” 

“ Ah, to think that you will see Virginia so 
soon I I’ve been recalling a great deal about 
Virginia during these days when you would not 
come to see me. Now I’ve forgotten every- 
thing I meant to say!” 

They climbed the hill slowly. Two or three 


3o6 


The Choir Invisible 


times she stopped and pressed her hand over 
her heart. She tried to hide the sound of her 
quivering breath and glanced up once to see 
whether he were observing. He was not. 
With his old habit of sending his thoughts on 
into the future, fighting its distant battles, feel- 
ing its far-off pain, he was less conscious of 
their parting than of the years during which 
he might not see her again. It is the woman 
who bursts the whole grape of sorrow against 
the irrepressible palate at such a moment ; to a 
man like him the same grape distils a vintage 
of yearning that will brim the cup of memory 
many a time beside his lamp in the final years. 

He would have passed the house, supposing 
they were to go to the familiar seat in the gar- 
den ; but a bench had been placed under a forest 
tree near the door and she led the way to this. 
The significance of the action was lost on him. 

‘‘Yes,” she continued, returning to a subject 
which furnished both an escape and a conceal- 
ment of her feelings, “ I have been revisiting 
my girlhood. You love Kentucky, but I cannot 
make myself over.” 

Her face grew full of the finest memories and 
all the fibres of her nature were becoming more 


The Choir Invisible 


30; 

unstrung. He had made sure of his strength 
before he had ever dared see her this day, had 
pitted his self-control against every possible 
temptation to betray himself that could arise 
throughout their parting ; and it was this very 
composure, so unlooked for, that unconsciously 
drove her to the opposite extreme. Shades of 
colour swept over her neck and brow, as though 
she were sitting under wind-tossed blossoming 
peach boughs. Her lustrous, excited eyes 
seemed never able to withdraw themselves from 
his whitened solemn face. Its mute repressed 
suffering touched her; its calmness filled her 
with vague pain that at such a time he could be 
so calm. And the current of her words ran 
swift, as a stream loosened at last from some 
steep height. 

Sometime you might be in that part of Vir- 
ginia. I should like you to know the country 
there and the place where my father’s house 
stood. And when you see the President, I 
wish you would recall my father to him. And 
you remember that one of my brothers was a 
favourite young officer of his. I should like you 
to hear him speak of them both : he has not for- 
gotten. Ah, my father! He had his faults. 


308 


The Choir Invisible 


but they were all the faults of a gentlemaa 
And the faults of my brothers were the faults 
of gentlemen. I never saw my mother; but I 
know how genuine she was by the books she 
liked and her dresses and her jewels, and the 
manner in which she had things put away in 
the closets. One’s childhood is everything! 
If I had not felt I was all there was in the world 
to speak for my father and my mother and my 
brothers ! Ah, sometimes pride is the greatest 
of virtues ! ” 

He bowed his head in assent. 

With a swift transition she changed her voice 
and manner and the conversation: 

“ That is enough about me. Have you 
thought that you will soon be talking to the 
greatest man in the world — you who love 
ideals 

I have not thought of it lately.” 

*‘You will think of it soon! And that re- 
minds me : why did you go away as you did the 
last time you were here — when I wanted to 
talk with you about the book } ” 

Her eyes questioned him imperiously. 

I cannot tell you : that is one of the things 
you’d better not wish to understand.” 


The Choir Invisible 


309 


She continued to look at him, and when she 
spoke, her voice was full of relief : 

“ It was the first time you ever did anything 
that I could not understand : I could not read 
your face that day.” 

Can you read it now } ” he asked, smiling 
at her sorrowfully. 

“ Perfectly ! ” 

“ What do you read ? ” 

“ Everything that I have always liked you 
for most. Memories are a great deal to me. 
Ah, if you had ever done anything to spoil 
yours ! ” 

“ Do you think that if I loved a woman she 
would know it by looking at my face ? ” 

“You would tell her : that is your nature.” 

“Would I.? Should 

“Why not.?” 

There was silence. 

“ Let me talk to you about the book,” he 
cried suddenly. He closed his eyes and passed 
one hand several times slowly across his fore- 
head ; then facing her but with his arm resting 
on the back of the seat and his eyes shaded by 
his hand he began : 

“ You were right : it is a book I have needed 


310 


The Choir Invisible 


At first it appeared centuries old to me and far 
away : the greatest gorgeous picture I had 
ever seen of human life anywhere. I could 
never tell you of the regret with which it filled 
me not to have lived in those days — of the 
longing to have been at Camelot ; to have seen 
the King and to have served him ; to have been 
friends with the best of the Knights ; to have 
taken their vows ; to have gone out with them 
to right what was wrong, to wrong nothing that 
was right.” 

The words were wrung from him with slow 
terrible effort, as though he were forcing him- 
self to draw nearer and nearer some spot of 
supreme mental struggle. She listened, stilled, 
as she had never been by any words of his. 
At the same time she felt stifled — felt that 
she should have to cry out — that he could be 
so deeply moved and so self-controlled. 

More slowly, with more composure, he went 
on. He was still turned toward her, his hand 
shading the upper part of his face : 

“ It was not until — not until — afterwards 
— that I got something more out of it than all 
that — got what I suppose you meant. ... I 
suppose you meant that the whole story was 


The Choir Invisible 


311 

not far away from me but present here — its 
right and wrong — its temptation ; that there 
was no vow a man could take then that a man 
must not take now ; that every man still has 
his Camelot and his King, still has to prove his 
courage and his strength to all men . . . and 
that after he has proved these, he has — as his 
last, highest act of service in the world ... to 
lay them all down, give them all up, for the 
sake of — of his spirit. You meant that I too, 
in my life, am to go in quest of the Grail : is 
it all that .? ” 

The tears lay mute on her eyes. She rose 
quickly and walked away to the garden. He 
followed her. When they had entered it, he 
strolled beside her among the plants. 

“You must see them once more,” she said. 
Her tone was perfectly quiet and careless. 
Then she continued with animation : 

“Some day you will not know this garden. 
When we are richer, you will see what I shall 
do : with it, with the house, with everything ! 
I do not live altogether on memories : I have 
hopes.” 

They came to the bench where they were 
used to talk. She sat down, and waited until 


312 


The Choir Invisible 


she could control the least tremor of her voice. 
Then she turned upon him her noble eyes, the 
exquisite passionate tender light of which no 
effort of the will could curtain in. Nor could 
any self-restraint turn aside the electrical en- 
ergy of her words : 

“ I thought I should not let you go away 
without saying something more to you about 
what has happened lately with Amy. My in- 
terest in you, your future, your success, has 
caused me to feel everything more than you 
can possibly realize. But I am not thinking 
of this now : it is nothing, it will pass. What 
it has caused me to see and to regret more 
than anything else is the power that life will 
have to hurt you on account of the ideals that 
you have built up in secret. We have been 
talking about Sir Thomas Malory and chivalry 
and ideals : there is one thing you need to 
know — all of us need to know it — and to 
know it well. 

“Ideals are of two kinds. There are those 
that correspond to our highest sense of per- 
fection. They express what we might be were 
life, the world, ourselves, all different, all better. 
Let these be high as they may ! They are not 


The Choir Invisible 


313 


useless because unattainable. Life is not a 
failure because they are never attained. God 
Himself requires of us the unattainable : * Be 
ye perfect, even as I am perfect ! He could 
not do less. He commands perfection, He for- 
gives us that Ave are not perfect ! Nor does 
He count us failures because we have to be 
forgiven. Our ideals also demand of us per- 
fection — the impossible ; but because we come 
far short of this we have no right to count our- 
selves as failures. What are they like — ideals 
such as these 'i They are like light-houses. But 
light-houses are not made to live in ; neither 
can we live in such ideals. I suppose they are 
meant to shine on us from afar, when the sea 
of our life is dark and stormy, perhaps to re- 
mind us of a haven of hope, as we drift or 
sink in shipwreck. All of your ideals are light- 
houses. 

“But there are ideals of another sort; it is 
these that you lack. As we advance into life, 
out of larger experience of the world and of 
ourselves, are unfolded the ideals of what will 
be possible to us if we make the best use of 
the world and of ourselves, taken as we are. 
Let these be as high as they may, they will 


314 The Choir htvisible 

always be lower than those others which are 
perhaps the veiled intimations of our immor- 
tality. These will always be imperfect ; but 
life is not a failure because they are so. It is 
these that are to burn for us, not like light- 
houses in the distance, but like candles in our 
hands. For so many of us they are too much 
like candles ! — the longer they burn, the lower 
they burn, until before death they go out alto- 
gether ! But I know that it will not be thus 
with you. At first you will have disappoint- 
ments and sufferings — the world on one side, 
unattainable ideals of perfection on the other. 
But by degrees the comforting light of what 
you may actually do and be in an imperfect 
world will shine close to you and all around 
you, more and more. It is this that will lead 
you never to perfection, but always toward it.” 

He bowed his head : the only answer he 
could make. 

It was getting late. The sun at this moment 
passed behind the western tree-tops. It was 
the old customary signal for him to go. They 
suddenly looked at each other in that shadow. 

“ I shall always think of you for your last 
words to me,” he said in a thick voice, rising. 


The Choir Invisible 


315 


‘^Some day you will find the woman who 
will be a candle,” she replied sadly, rising also. 
Then with her lips trembling, she added pite- 
ously : 

“Oh, if you ever marry, don’t make the 
mistake of treating the woman as an ideal ! 
Treat her in every way as a human being ex- 
actly like yourself ! With the same weakness, 
the same struggles, the same temptations ! 
And as you have some mercy on yourself 
despite your faults, have some mercy on her 
despite hers.” 

“ Must I ever think of you as having been 
weak and tempted as I have been .? ” he cried, 
the guilty blood rushing into his face in the old 
struggle to tell her everything. 

“ Oh, as for me — what do you know of me ! ” 
she cried, laughing. And then more quickly : 

“ I have read your face ! What do you read 
in mine } ” 

He looked long into it : 

“All that I have most wished to see in the 
face of any woman — except one thing ! ” 

“ What is that ? But don’t tell me ! ” 

She turned away toward the garden gate. 
In silence they passed out — walking toward 


The Choir Invisible 


316 

the edge of the clearing. Half-way she paused. 
He lifted his hat and held out his hand. She 
laid hers in it and they gave each other the 
long clinging grasp of affection. 

“Always be a good man,” she said, tighten- 
ing her grasp and turning her face away. 

As he was hurrying off, she called to him in 
a voice full of emotion : 

“ Come back ! ” 

He wheeled and walked towards her blindly. 
She scanned his face, feature by feature. 
“Take off your hat ! ” she said with a tremu- 
lous little laugh. He did so and she looked 
at his forehead and his hair. 

“ Go now, dear friend ! ” she said calmly but 
quickly. 


XXI 


It was the morning of the wedding. 

According to the usage of the time the mar- 
riage ceremony was to take place early in the 
forenoon, in order that the guests, gathered in 
from distant settlements of the wilderness, 
might have the day for festivity and still reach 
home before night. Late in the afternoon the 
bridal couple, escorted by many friends, were 
to ride into town to Joseph’s house, and in the 
evening there was to be a house-warming. 

The custom of the backwoods country ran 
that a man must not be left to build his house 
alone; and one day some weeks before this 
wagons had begun to roll in from this direc- 
tion and from that direction out of the forest, 
hauling the logs for Joseph’s cabin. 

Then with loud laughter and the writhing of 
tough backs and the straining of powerful arms 
and legs, men old, middle-aged, and young had 
raised the house like overgrown boys at play, 
and then had returned to their own neglected 

317 


3i8 The Choir Invisible 

business : so that to him was left only the 
finishing. 

He had finished it and furnished it for the 
simple scant needs of pioneer life. But on this, 
his wedding morning, he had hardly left the 
town, escorted by friends on horseback, before 
many who had variously excused themselves 
from going began to issue from their homes : 
women carrying rolls of linen and pones of 
bread ; boys with huge joints of jerked meat 
and dried tongues of the buffalo, bear, and deer. 
There was a noggin, a piggin, a churn, a home- 
made chair ; there was a quilt from a grand- 
mother and a pioneer cradle — a mere trough 
scooped out of a walnut log. An old pioneer 
sent the antlers of a stag for a hat-rack, and a 
buffalo rug for the young pair to lie warm under 
of bitter, winter nights ; his wife sent a spin- 
ning-wheel and a bundle of shingles for johnny- 
cakes. Some of the merchants gave packages 
of Philadelphia groceries ; some of the aristo- 
cratic families parted with heirlooms that had 
been laboriously brought over the mountains — 
a cup and saucer of Sevres, a pair of tall brass 
candlesticks, and a Venus-mirror framed in 
ebony. 


The Choir Invisible 


319 


It was about three o’clock in the afternoon 
when John Gray jumped on the back of a strong 
trusty horse at the stable of the Indian Queen, 
leaned over to shake the hands of the friends 
who had met there to see him off, and turned 
his horse’s head in the direction of the path that 
led to the Wilderness Road. 

But when he had gone about a mile, he struck 
into the forest at right angles and rode across 
the country until he reached that green wood- 
land pathway which led from the home of the 
Falconers to the public road between Lexington 
and Frankfort. He tied his horse some distance 
away, and walking back, sat down on the roots 
of an oak and waited. 

It was a day when the beauty of the earth 
makes itself felt like ravishing music that has 
no sound. The air, warm and full of summer 
fragrance, was of that ethereal untinged clear- 
ness which spreads over all things the softness 
of velvet. The far-vaulted heavens, so bounti- 
ful of light, were an illimitable weightless cur- 
tain of pale-blue velvet ; the rolling clouds were 
of white velvet ; the grass, the stems of bend- 
ing wild flowers, the drooping sprays of wood- 
land foliage, were so many forms of emerald 


320 


The Choir Invisible 


velvet; the gnarled trunks of the trees were 
gray and brown velvet ; the wings and breasts 
of the birds, flitting hither and thither, were of 
gold and scarlet velvet; the butterflies were 
stemless, floating velvet blossoms. 

“ Farewell, Kentucky ! farewell ! ” he said, 
looking about him at it all. 

Two hours passed. The shadows were 
lengthening rapidly. Over the forest, like the 
sigh of a spirit, swept from out the west the 
first intimation of waning light, of the myster- 
ies of coming darkness. At last there reached 
his ear from far down the woodland path the 
sounds of voices and laughter — again and again 
— louder and louder — and then through the 
low thick boughs he caught glimpses of them 
coming. Now beneath the darker arches of 
the trees, now across pale-green spaces shot 
by slanting sunbeams. Once there was a halt 
and a merry outcry. Long grape-vines from 
opposite sides of the road had been tied across 
it, and this barrier had to be cut through. 
Then on they came again ; At the head of the 
procession, astride an old horse that in his 
better days had belonged to a mounted rifleman, 
rode the parson. He was several yards ahead 


The Choir Invisible 


321 


of the others and quite forgetful of them. The 
end of his flute stuck neglectedly out of his 
waistcoat pocket ; his bridle reins lay slack on 
the neck of the drowsy beast ; his hands were 
piled on the pommel of the saddle as over his 
familiar pulpit ; his dreamy moss-agate eyes 
were on the tree-tops far ahead. In truth he 
was preparing a sermon on the affection of one 
man for another and ransacking Scripture for 
illustrations : and he meant to preach this the 
following Sunday when there would be some 
one sadly missed among his hearers. Never- 
theless he enjoyed great peace of spirit this 
day : it was not John who rode behind him as 
the bridegroom : otherwise he would as soon 
have returned to the town at the head of the 
forces of Armageddon. 

Behind the parson came William Penn in the 
glory of a new bridle and saddle and a blanket 
of crimson cloth ; his coat smooth as satin, his 
mane a tumbling cataract of white silk ; bunches 
of wild roses at his ears ; his blue-black eyes 
never so soft, and seeming to lift his feet cau- 
tiously like an elephant bearing an Indian prin- 
cess. 

They were riding side by side, the young 

Y 


322 


The Choir hivisihle 


husband and wife. He keeping one hand on 
the pommel of her saddle, thus holding them 
together ; while with the other he used his hat 
to fan now his face, now hers, though his was 
the one that needed it, she being cool and 
quietly radiant with the thoughts of her triumph 
that day — the triumph of her wedding, of her 
own beauty. Furthermore she was looking 
ahead to the house-warming that night when she 
would be able to triumph again and also to count 
her presents. 

Then came Major and Mrs. Falconer. Her 
face was hidden by a veil and as they passed, 
it was held turned toward him : he was talking, 
uninterrupted. 

Then followed Horatio Turpin and Kitty Poy- 
thress ; and then Erskine and his betrothed, he 
with fresh feathers of the hawk and the scarlet 
tanager gleaming in his cap above his swart, 
stern aquiline face. Then Peter, beside the 
widow Babcock ; he openly aflame and solici- 
tous ; she coy and discreetly inviting, as is the 
wisdom of some. Then others and others and 
others — a long gay pageant, filling the woods 
with merry voices and laughter. 

They passed and the sounds died away — 


The Choir Invisible 


323 


passed on to the town awaiting them, to the 
house-warming, and, please God, to long life 
and some real affection and happiness. 

Once he had expected to ride beside her at 
the head of this procession. There had gone 
by him the vision of his own life as it was to 
have been. 

Long after the last sound had ceased in the 
distance he was sitting at the root of the red 
oak. The sun set, the moon rose, he was there 
still. A loud, impatient neigh from his horse 
aroused him. He sprang lightly up, meaning 
to ride all night and not to draw rein until he 
had crossed the Kentucky River and reached 
Traveller’s Rest, the home of Governor Shelby, 
where he had been invited to break his travel. 

All that night he rode and at sunrise was far 
away. Pausing on a height and turning his 
horse’s head, he sat a long time motionless as 
a statue. Then he struck his feet into its flank 
and all that day rode back again. 

The sun was striking the tree-tops as he 
neared the clearing. He could see her across 
the garden. She sat quite still, her face turned 
toward the horizon. Against her breast, opened 
but forgotten, lay a book. He could recognize 


324 


The Choir Invisible 


it. By that story she had judged him and 
wished to guide him. The sight smote his 
eyes like the hilt of a knight’s sword used as 
a Cross to drive away the Evil One. For he 
knew the evil purpose with which he had 
returned. 

And so he sat watching her until she rose 
and walked slowly to the house. 


XXII 


It was early autumn when the first letters 
from him were received over the mountains. 
All these had relation to Mount Vernon and 
his business there. 

To the Transylvania Library Committee he 
wrote that the President had made a liberal 
subscription for the buying of books and that 
the Vice-President and other public men would 
be likely to contribute. 

His sonorous, pompous letter to a member of 
the Democratic Society was much longer and in 
part as follows : 

“When I made known to the President who 
I was and where I came from, he regarded me 
with a look at once so stern and so benign, that 
I felt like one of my own school-boys overtaken 
in some small rascality and was almost of a 
mind to march straight to a corner of the room 
and stand with my face to the wall. If he had 
seized me by the coat collar and trounced me 
well, I should somehow have felt that he had 


325 


326 


The Choir Invisible 


the right. From the conversations that followed 
I am led to believe that he knows the name of 
every prominent member of the Democratic 
Society of Lexington, and that he understands 
Kentucky affairs with regard to national and 
international complications as no other living 
man. While questioning me on the subject, he 
had the manner of one who, from conscientious- 
ness, would further verify facts which he had 
already tested. But what impressed me even 
more than his knowledge was his justice; in 
illustration of which I shall never forget his 
saying, that the part which Kentucky had 
taken, or had wished to take, in the Spanish 
and French conspiracies had caused him greater 
solicitude than any other single event since the 
foundation of the National Government ; but 
that nowhere else in America had the struggle 
for immediate self-government been so neces- 
sary and so difficult, and that nowhere else were 
the mistakes of patriotic and able men more 
natural or more to be judged with mildness. 

“ I think I can quote his very words when he 
spoke of the foolish jealousies and heartburn- 
ings, due to misrepresentations, that have influ- 
enced Kentucky against the East as a section 


The Choir Invisible 


32; 


and against the Government as favouring it : 
‘The West derives from the East supplies 
requisite to its growth and comfort ; and what 
is perhaps of still greater consequence, it must 
of necessity owe the secure enjoyment of in- 
dispensable outlets for its own productions to 
the weight, influence, and the future maritime 
strength of the Atlantic side of the Union, 
directed by an indissoluble community of inter- 
ests, as One Nation' 

“ Memorable to me likewise was the language 
in which he proceeded to show that this was 
true : 

“ ‘ The inhabitants of our Western country 
have lately had a useful lesson on this head. 
They have seen in the negotiations by the 
Executive, and in the unanimous ratification by 
the Senate of the treaty with Spain, and in the 
universal satisfaction of that event throughout 
the United States, a decisive proof how un- 
founded were the suspicions propagated among 
them of a policy in the General Government 
and in the Atlantic States unfriendly to their 
interests in regard to the Mississippi. . . . 
Will they not henceforth be deaf to those ad- 
visers, if such there are, who would sever then? 


328 


The Choir Invisible 


from their Brethren and connect them with 
Aliens ? ’ 

I am frank to declare that, having enjoyed 
the high privilege of these interviews with the 
President and been brought to judge rightly 
what through ignorance I had judged amiss, I 
feel myself in honour bound to renounce my 
past political convictions and to resign my 
membership in the Lexington Democratic So- 
ciety. Nor shall I join the Democratic Society 
of Philadelphia, as had been my ardent purpose ; 
and it will not be possible for me on reaching 
that city to act as the emissary of the Kentucky 
Clubs. But I shall lay before that Society the 
despatches of which I am the bearer. And will 
you lay before yours the papers herewith en- 
closed, containing my formal resignation with 
the grounds thereof carefully stated.?” 

To Mrs. Falconer he wrote buoyantly : 

I have crossed the Kentucky Alps, seen the 
American Caesar, carried away some of his gold. 
I came, I saw, I overcame. How do you think 
I met the President.? I was riding toward 
Mount Vernon one quiet sunny afternoon and 
unexpectedly came upon an old gentleman who 
was putting up some bars that opened into a 


The Choir Invisible 


329 


wheat-field by the roadside. He had on long 
boots, corduroy smalls, a speckled red jacket, 
blue coat with yellow buttons, and a broad- 
brimmed white hat. He held a hickory switch 
in his hand. An umbrella and a long staff were 
attached to his saddle-bow. His limbs were so 
long, large, and sinewy; his countenance so 
lofty, masculine, and contemplative ; and alto- 
gether he was of a presence so statue-like and 
venerable that my heart with a great throb 
cried out. It is Washington ! ” 

“My dear friend,” he wrote at the close, “it 
is of no little worth to me that I should have 
come to Mount Vernon at this turning-point of 
my life. I find myself uplifted to a plane of 
thought and feeling higher than has ever been 
trod by me. When I began to draw near this 
place, I seemed to be mounting higher, like a 
man ascending a mountain ; and ever since my 
arrival there has been this same sense of rising 
into a still loftier atmosphere, of surveying a 
vaster horizon, of beholding the juster relations 
of surrounding objects. 

“All this feeling has its origin in my con- 
templation of the character of the President. 
You know that when a heavy sleet falls upon 


330 


The Choir Invisible 


the Kentucky forest, the great trees crack and 
split, or groan and stagger, with branches 
snapped off or trailing. In adversity it is often 
so with men. But he is a vast mountain -peak, 
always calm, always lofty, always resting upon 
a base that nothing can shake ; never higher, 
never lower, never changing ; from every quarter 
of the earth storms have rushed in and beaten 
upon him ; but they have passed ; he is as he 
was. The heavens have emptied their sleets 
and snows on his head, — these have made him 
look only the purer, only the more sublime. 

“From the spectacle of this great man thus 
bearing the great burdens of his great life, a 
new standard of what is possible to human 
nature has been raised within me. I have 
seen with my own eyes a man whom the ad- 
verse forces of the world have not been able 
to wreck — a lover of perfection, who has so 
wrought it out in his character that to know 
him is to be awed into reverence of his virtues. 
I shall go away from him with nobler hopes of 
what a man may do and be. 

“ It is to you solely that I owe the honour 
of having enjoyed the personal consideration of 
the President. His reception of me had been 


The Choir Invisible 


331 


in the highest degree ceremonious and distant ; 
but upon my mentioning the names of your 
father and brother, his manner grew warm : I 
had touched that trait of affectionate faithful- 
ness with which he has always held on to every 
tie of kin and friendship. That your father 
should have fought against him and your 
brother under him made no difference in his 
memory. He had many questions to ask re- 
garding you — your happiness, your family — 
to some of which I could return the answers 
that gave him pleasure or left him thoughtful. 
Upon my setting out from Mount Vernon, his 
last words made me the bearer of his message 
to you, the child of an old comrade and the 
sister of a gallant young soldier.” 

Beyond this there was nothing personal in his 
letter and nothing as to his return. 

When she next heard, he was in Philadelphia, 
giving his attention to the choosing and ship' 
ment of the books. One piece of news, im* 
parted in perfect calmness by him, occasioned 
her acute disappointment. His expectation of 
coming into possession of some ten thousand 
dollars had not quite been realized. An appeal 
had been taken and the case was yet pending. 


332 


The Choir Invisible 


He was pleased neither with the good faith nor 
with the good sense of the counsel engaged ; 
and he would remain on the spot himself during 
the trial. He added that he was lodging with 
a pleasant family. Then followed the long win- 
ter during which all communication between 
the frontier and the seaboard was interrupted. 
When spring returned at last and the earliest 
travel was resumed, other letters came, announc- 
ing that the case had gone against him, and 
that he had nothing. 

She sold at once all the new linen that had 
been woven, got together all the money she 
otherwise could and despatched it with Major 
Falconer’s consent, begging him to make use 
of it for the sake of their friendship — not to 
be foolish and proud : there were lawyers’ fees 
it could help to pay, or other plain practical 
needs it might cover. But when the post-rider 
returned, he brought it all back with a letter 
full of gratitude : only, he couldn’t accept it. 
And the messenger had been warned not to let 
it be known that he was in prison for debt on 
account of these same suit expenses ; for hav- 
ing from the first formed a low opinion of his 
counsel’s honour and ability and having later 


The Choir Invisible 


333 


expressed this opinion at the door of the court- 
room with a good deal of fire and a good deal 
of contempt, and being furthermore unable and 
unwilling to pay the exorbitant fee, he had been 
promptly clapped into jail by the incensed at- 
torney, as well for his poverty as for his temper 
and his pride. 

In jail he spent that spring and summer and 
autumn. Then an important turn was given to 
his history. It seems that among the commis- 
sions with which he was charged on leaving 
Lexington was one from Edward West, the 
watchmaker and inventor, who some time be- 
fore, and long before Fulton, had made trial 
of steam navigation with a small boat on the 
Town Fork of the Elkhorn, and who desired 
to have his invention brought before the 
American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia. 
He had therefore placed a full description of 
his steamboat in John’s hands with the request 
that he would enforce this with the testimony 
of an eye-witness as to its having moved 
through the water. At this time, through 
Franklin’s influence, the Society was keenly 
interested in the work of inventors, having 
received also some years previous from Hya- 


334 


The Choir Invisible 


cinthe de Magellan two hundred guineas to 
be used for rewarding the authors of improve- 
ments and discoveries. Accordingly it took 
up the subject of West’s invention but desired 
to hear more regarding the success of the 
experiment ; and so requested John to appear 
before it at one of its meetings. But upon 
looking for this obscure John and finding him 
in jail, the committee were under the necessity 
of appearing before him. Whereupon, grown 
interested in him and made acquainted with 
the ground of his unreasonable imprisonment, 
some of the members effected his release — by 
recourse to the attorney with certain well- 
directed threats that he could easily be put into 
jail for his own debts. Not only this; but soon 
afterwards the young Westerner was taken into 
the law-office of one of these gentlemen, bind- 
ing himself for a term of years. 

It was not until spring that he wrote her 
humorously of his days in jail ; but when it 
came to telling her of the other matter, the 
words refused to form themselves before his 
will or his hand to shape them on the paper. 
He would do this in the next letter, he said 
to himself mournfully. 


The Choir Invisible 


335 


But early that winter Major Falconer had 
died, and his next letter was but a short hur- 
ried reply to one from her, bringing him this 
intelligence. And before he wrote again, cer- 
tain grave events had happened that led him 
still further to defer acquainting her with his 
new situation, new duties, new plans. 

That same spring, then, during which he 
was entering upon his career in Philadelphia, 
she too began really to live. And beginning 
to live, she began to build — inwardly and out- 
wardly ; for what is all life but ceaseless inner 
and outer building? 

As the first act, she sold one of the major’s 
military grants, reserving the ample, noble, 
parklike one on which she had passed exist- 
ence up to this ; and near the cabin she laid 
the foundations of her house. Not the great 
ancestral manor-house on the James and yet 
a seaboard aristocratic Virginia country-place : 
two-story brick with two-story front veranda 
of Corinthian columns ; wide hall, wide stair- 
way ; oak wood interior, hand-carved, massive ; 
sliding doors between the large library and 
large dining-room ; great bedrooms, great fire- 


336 The Choir Invisible 

places, great brass fenders and fire-dogs, brass 
locks and keys : full of elegance, spaciousness, 
comfort, rest. 

In every letter she sent him that spring 
and summer and early autumn, always she had 
something to tell him about this house, about 
the room in it built for him, about the negroes 
she had bought, the land she was clearing, the 
changes and improvements everywhere : as to 
many things she wanted his advice. That year 
also she sent back to Virginia for flower-seed 
and shrubs and plants — the same old familiar 
ones that had grown on her father’s lawn, in 
the garden, about the walls, along the water — 
some of which had been brought over from 
England : the flags, the lilies, the pinks, the 
Virginia creeper, the lilacs, honeysuckles, cala- 
canthus, snowdrops, roses — all of them. Speak- 
ing of this, she wrote him that of course the 
most of these would have to be set out that 
autumn, and little could be done for grounds 
till the following season ; but the house ! — it 
was to be finished before winter set in. In the 
last of these letters, she ended by saying : “ I 
think I know now the very day you will be 
coming back. I can hear your horse’s feet 


The Choir Invisible 


337 

rustling in the leaves of — I said — October ; 
but I will say November this time.” 

His replies were unsatisfying. There had 
been the short, hurried, earnest letter, speaking 
of Major Falconer’s death : that was all right. 
But since then a vague blinding mist had 
seemed to lie between her eyes and every page. 
Something was kept hidden — some new trou- 
ble. “I shall understand everything when he 
comes ! ” she would say to herself each time. 
‘‘I can wait.” Her buoyancy was irrepress- 
ible. 

Late that autumn the house was finished — 
one of those early country-places yet to be seen 
here and there on the landscape of Kentucky, 
marking the building era of the aristocratic 
Virginians and renewing in the wilderness the 
architecture of the James. 

She had taken such delight in furnishing her 
room : in the great bedstead with its mighty 
posts, its high tester, its dainty, hiding cur- 
tains; such delight in choosing, in bleaching, 
in weaving the linen for it ! And the pillow- 
cases — how expectant they were on the two 
pillows now set side by side at the head of the 
bed, with the delicate embroidery in the centre 


338 


The Choir Invisible 


of each ! At first she had thought of working 
her initials within an oval-shaped vine ; but 
one day, her needle suddenly arrested in the 
air, she had simply worked a rose. 

Late one afternoon, when the blue of Indian 
summer lay on the walls of the forest like a still 
sweet veil, she came home from a walk in the 
woods. Her feet had been rustling among the 
brown leaves and each time she had laughed. 
At her round white throat she had pinned a 
scarlet leaf, from an old habit of her girlhood. 
But was not Kentucky turning into Virginia } 
Was not womanhood becoming girlhood again ? 
She was still so young — only thirty-eight. She 
had the right to be bringing in from the woods 
a bunch of the purple violets of November. 

She sat down in her shadowy room before the 
deep fireplace : where there was such comfort 
now, such loneliness. In early years at such 
hours she had liked to play. She resolved to 
get her a spinet. Yes ; and she would have 
myrtle-berry candles instead of tallow, and a 
slender-legged mahogany table beside which to 
read again in the Spectator and “Tom Jones.” 
As nearly as she could she would bring back 
everything that she had been used to in her 


The Choir Invisible 


339 


childhood — was not all life still before her? If 
he were coming, it must be soon, and she would 
know what had been keeping him — what it was 
that had happened. She had walked to meet 
him so many times already. And the heartless 
little gusts of wind, starting up among the 
leaves in the woods, how often they had fooled 
her ear and left her white and trembling ! 

The negro boy who had been sent to town 
on other business and to fetch the mail, soon 
afterwards knocked and entered. There was 
a letter front him — a short one and a paper. 
She read the letter and could not believe her 
own eyes, could not believe her own mind. 
Then she opened the paper and read the an- 
nouncement of It printed there: he was mar- 
ried. 

That night in her bedroom — with the great 
clock measuring out life in the corner — the red 
logs turning slowly to ashes — the crickets under 
the bricks of the hearth singing of summer 
gone — that night, sitting by the candle-stand, 
where his letter lay opened, in a nightgown 
white as white samite, she loosened the folds 
of her heavy lustrous hair — wave upon wave — 
until the edges that rippled over her forehead 


340 


The Choir Invisible 


rippled down over her knees. With the loosen* 
ing of her hair somehow had come the loosen- 
ing of her tears. And with the loosening of 
her tears came the loosening of her hold upon 
what she, until this night, had never- acknow- 
ledged to herself — her love of him, the belief 
that he had loved her. 

The next morning the parson, standing a 
white, cold shepherd before his chilly wilder- 
ness flock, preached a sermon from the text : 
‘T shall go softly all my years.” While the 
heads of the rest were bowed during the last 
moments of prayer, she rose and slipped out. 

*‘Yes,” she said to herself, gathering her veil 
closely about her face as she alighted at the 
door of her house and the withered leaves of 
November were whirled fiercely about her feet, 
“ T shall go softly all my years.” 


XXIII 


After this the years were swept along. Fast 
came the changes in Kentucky. The prophecy 
which John Gray had made to his school-chil- 
dren passed to its realization and reality went 
far beyond it. In waves of migration, hundreds 
upon hundreds of thousands of settlers of the 
Anglo-Saxon race hurried into the wilderness 
and there jostled and shouldered each other in 
the race passion of soil-owning and home-build- 
ing; or always farther westward they rushed, 
pushing the Indian back. Lexington became 
the chief manufacturing town of the new civ- 
ilization, thronged by merchants and fur-clad 
traders ; gathered into it were men and women 
making a society that would have been brilliant 
in the capitals of the East ; at its bar were 
heard illustrious voices, the echoes of which are 
not yet dead, are past all dying ; the genius of 
young Jouett found for itself the secret of paint- 
ing canvases so luminous and true that never 


341 


342 


The Choir Invisible 


since in the history of the State have they been 
equalled ; the Transylvania University arose 
with lecturers famous enough to be known in 
Europe : students of law and medicine travelled 
to it from all parts of the land. 

John Gray’s school-children grew to be men 
and women. For the men there were no longer 
battles to fight in Kentucky, but there were the 
wars of the Nation ; and far away on the widen- 
ing boundaries of the Republic they conquered 
or failed and fell : as volunteers with Perry in 
the victory on Lake Erie ; in the awful massacre 
at the River Raisin ; under Harrison at the 
Thames ; in the mud and darkness of the Mis- 
sissippi at New Orleans, repelling Pakenham’s 
charge with Wellington’s veteran, victory -flu shed 
campaigners. 

The school-master’s friend, the parson, he too 
had known his more peaceful warfare, having 
married and become a manifold father. Of a 
truth it was feared at one period that the parson 
was running altogether to prayers and daugh- 
ters. For it was remarked that with each 
birth, his petitions seemed longer and his voice 
to rise from behind the chancel with a fresh 
wail as of one who felt a growing grievance 


The Choir Invisible 


343 


both against himself and the Almighty. How- 
beit, innocently enough after the appearance of 
the fifth female infant, one morning he preached 
on the words : “No man knoweth what manner 
of creature he is ” ; and was unaware that a 
sudden smile rippled over the faces of his 
hearers. But it was not until later on when 
mother and six were packed into one short pew 
at morning service, that they became known in 
a body as the parson’s Collect for all Sundays. 

Sometimes the little ones were divided and 
part of them sat in another pew where there 
was a single occupant — a woman — childless. 

“Yes,” she had said, “I shall go softly all 
my years.” 

The plants she had brought that summer 
from Virginia had long since become old bushes. 
The Virginia Creeper had climbed to the tops 
of the trees. The garden, though in the same 
spot, was another place now, with vine-heavy 
arbours and sodded walks running between bor- 
ders of flowers and vegetables — daffodils and 
thyme — in the quaint Virginia fashion. There 
was a lawn covered as the ancestral one had 
been with the feathery grass of England. 


344 


The Choir Invisible 


There was a park where the deer remained at 
home in their wilderness. 

Crowning this landscape of comfort and good 
taste, stood the house. Often of nights when 
its roof lay deep under snow and the eaves were 
bearded with hoary icicles, there were candles 
twinkling at every window and the sounds of 
music and dancing in the parlours. Once a yeai 
there was a great venison supper in the dining- 
room, draped with holly and mistletoe. On 
Christmas eve many a child’s sock or stocking 
was hung — no one knew when or by whom — 
around the shadowy chimney-seat of her room ; 
and every Christmas morning the little negroes 
from the cabins knew to whom each of these 
belonged. In spring, parties of young girls and 
youths came out from town for fishing parties 
and picknicked on the lawn amid the dandelions 
and under the song of the blackbird ; during the 
summer, for days at a time, other gay company 
filled the house ; of autumns there were nutting 
parties in the russet woods. Other guests also, 
not young, not gay. Aaron Burr was enter- 
tained there ; there met for counsel the foremost 
Western leaders in his magnificent conspiracy. 
More than one great man of his day, middle- 


The Choir Invisible 


345 


aged, unmarried, began his visits, returned 
oftener for a while — always alone — and one 
day drove away disappointed. 

Through seasons and changes she had gone 
softly : never retreating from life but drawing 
about her as closely as she could its ties, its 
sympathies, its duties : in all things a character 
of the finest equipoise, the truest moderation. 

But there are women in the world — some 
of us men may have discerned one of them in 
the sweep of our experience — to whom the joy 
and the sorrow come alike with quietness. For 
them there is neither the cry of sudden delight 
nor the cry of sudden anguish. Gazing deep 
into their eyes, we are reminded of the light of 
dim churches ; hearing their voices, we dream 
of some minstrel whose murmurs reach us im- 
perfectly through his fortress wall ; beholding 
the sweetness of their faces, we are touched as 
by the appeal of the mute flowers; merely 
meeting them in the street, we recall the long- 
vanished image of the Divine Goodness. They 
are the women who have missed happiness and 
who know it, but having failed of affection, 
give themselves to duty. And so life never 
rises high and close rbout them as about one 


346 


The Choir Invisible 


who stands waist-deep in a wheat-field, gathering 
at will either its poppies or its sheaves ; it flows 
forever away as from one who pauses waist-deep 
in a stream and hearkens rather to the rush of 
all things toward the eternal deeps. It was into 
the company of these quieter pilgrims that she 
had passed : she had missed happiness twice. 

Her beauty had never faded. Nature had 
fought hard in her for all things, having 
prepared her for all things ; and to the last 
youth of her womanhood it burned like an au- 
tumn rose which some morning we may have 
found on the lawn under a dew that is turning 
to ice. But when youth was gone, in the fol- 
lowing years her face began to reflect the fresh- 
ness of Easter lilies. For prayer will in time 
make the human countenance its own divinest 
altar; years upon years of true thoughts, like 
ceaseless music shut up within, will vibrate 
along the nerves of expression until the lines 
of the living instrument are drawn into corre- 
spondence, and the harmony of visible form 
matches the unheard harmonies of the mind. 
It was about this time also that there fell upon 
her hair the earliest rays of that light which is 
the dawn of the Eternal Morning. 


The Choir Invisible 


347 


She had never ceased to watch his career as 
part of her very life. Time was powerless to 
remove him farther from her than destiny had 
removed him long before : it was always yester- 
day ; the whole past with him seemed caught 
upon the clearest mirror just at her back. 
Once or twice a year she received a letter, 
books, papers, something; she had been kept 
informed of the birth of his children. From 
other sources — his letters to the parson, traders 
between Philadelphia and the West — she knew 
other things : he had risen in the world, was a 
judge, often leading counsel in great cases, was 
almost a great man. She planted her pride, 
her gratitude, her happiness, on this new soil : 
they were the last fresh growths of her charac- 
ter ; they were the few seed that a woman in 
the final years will sow in a window-box and 
cover with a window-pane and watch and water 
and wake and think of in the night — she who 
was used once to range the fields. 

But never from first to last had she received 
a letter from him that was transparent ; the 
mystery stayed unlifted ; she had to accept the 
constancy of his friendship without its confi- 
dence. Question or chiding of course there 


348 


The Choir Invisible 


never was from her; inborn refinement alone 
would have kept her from curiosity or prying ; 
but she could not put away the conviction that 
the concealment which he steadily adhered to 
was either delicately connected with his mar- 
riage or registered but too plainly some down- 
ward change in himself. Which was it, or was 
it both } Had he too missed happiness.^ missed 
it as she had — by a union with a perfectly 
commonplace, plodding, unimaginative, unsym- 
pathetic, unrefined nature ? Or had he changed 
for the worse without even this provocation 
Had he gone the usual way of men, fallen, 
grown secretly corrupt And was it a mercy 
to be able to remember him, not to know him ? 

These thoughts filled her so often, so often! For 
into the busiest life — the life that toils to shut 
out thought — the inevitable leisure will come ; 
and with the leisure will return the dreaded 
emptiness, the loneliness, the never stifled 
need of sympathy, affection, companionship — 
for that world of two outside of which every 
other human being is a stranger. And it was 
he who entered into all these hours of hers as 
by a right that she had neither the heart nor 
the strength to question. 


The Choir Invisible 


349 


For behind everything else there was one 
thing more — deeper than anything else, dearer, 
more sacred ; the feeling she would never sur- 
render that for a while at least he had cared 
more for her than he had ever realized. 

One mild afternoon of autumn she was walk- 
ing with quiet dignity around her garden. She 
had just come from town where she had given 
to Jouett the last sitting for her portrait, and 
she was richly dressed in the satin gown and 
cap of lace which those who see the picture 
nowadays will remember. The finishing of it 
had saddened her a little ; she meant to leave it 
to him ; and she wondered whether, when he 
looked into the eyes of this portrait, he would 
at last understand : she had tried to tell him the 
truth ; it was the truth that Jouett painted. 

Thus she was thinking of the past as usual ; 
and once she paused in the very spot where one 
sweet afternoon of May long ago he had leaned 
over the fence, holding in his hand his big black 
hat decorated with a Jacobin cockade, and had 
asked her consent to marry Amy. Was not 
yonder the very maple, in the shade of which 
he and she sat some weeks later while she had 


350 


The Choir Invisible 


talked with him about the ideals of life ? She 
laughed, but she touched her handkerchief to 
her eyes as she turned to pass on. Then she 
stopped abruptly. 

Coming down the garden walk toward her 
with a light rapid step, his head in the air, a 
smile on his fresh noble face, an earnest look in 
his gray eyes, was a tall young fellow of some 
eighteen years. A few feet off he lifted his hat 
with a free, gallant air, uncovering a head of 
dark-red hair, closely curling. 

beg your pardon, madam,” he said, in a 
voice that fell on her ear like music long re- 
membered. ‘‘Is this Mrs. Falconer.^” 

“Yes,” she replied, beginning to tremble, “I 
am Mrs. Falconer.” 

“Then I should like to introduce myself to 
you, dearest madam. I am John Gray, the son 
of your old friend, and my father sends me to 
you to stay with you if you will let me. And 
he desires me to deliver this letter.” 

“John Gray!” she cried, running forward 
and searching his face. “ You John Gray I 
You! Take off your hat!” For a moment 
she looked at his forehead and his hair; her 
eyes became blinded with tears. She threw her 


The Choir Invisible 


351 


arms around his neck with a sob and covered 
his face with kisses. 

Madam,” said the young fellow, stooping to 
pick up his hat, and laughing outright at his 
own blushes and confusion, *‘I don’t wonder 
that my father thinks so much of you ! ” 

“ I never did that to your father ! ” she re- 
torted. Beneath the wrinkled ivory of her 
skin a tinge of faintest pink appeared and dis- 
appeared. 

Half an hour later she was sitting at a west- 
ern window. Young John Gray had gone to 
the library to write to his father and mother, 
announcing his arrival ; and in her lap lay his 
father’s letter which with tremulous fingers she 
was now wiping her spectacles to read. In all 
these years she had never allowed herself to 
think of her John Gray as having grown older : 
she saw him still young, as when he used to 
lean over the garden fence. But now the 
presence of this son had the effect of suddenly 
pushing the father far on into life ; and her 
heart ached with this first realization that he 
too must have passed the climbing-point and 
have set his feet on the shaded downward slope 
that leads to the quiet valley. 


352 


The Choir Invisible 


His letter began lightly : 

“I send John to you with the wish that you 
will be to the son the same inspiring soul you 
once were to the father. You will find him 
headstrong and with great notions of what he 
is to be in the world. But he is warm-hearted 
and clean-hearted. Let him do for you the 
things I used to do ; let him hold the yarn on 
his arms for you to wind off, and read to you 
your favourite novels ; he is a good reader for 
a young fellow. And will you get out your 
spinning-wheel some night when the logs are 
roaring in the fireplace and let him hear its 
music ^ Will you some time with your own 
hands make him a johnny-cake on a new ash 
shingle ? I want him to know a woman who 
can do all these things and still be a great lady. 
And lay upon him all the burdens that in any 
way you can, so that he shall not think too 
much of what he may some day do in life, but, 
of what he is actually doing. We get great 
reports of the Transylvania University, of the 
bar of Lexington, of the civilization that I fore- 
saw would spring up in Kentucky ; and I send 
John to you with the wish that he hear lectures 
and afterward go into the office of some one 


The Choir Invisible 


353 


<vhom I shall name, and finally marry and settle 
there for life. You recall this as the wish of 
my own; through John, then, I shall accomplish 
it — through John shall be done what I could 
not do. You see how stubborn I am ! I have 
given him the names of my school-children. He 
is to find out those of them who still live there, 
and to tell me of those who have passed away 
or been scattered. 

I do not know ; but if at the end of life I 
should be left alone here, perhaps I shall make 
my way back to Kentucky to John, as the old 
tree falls beside the young one.” 

From this point the tone of the letter 
changed. 

And now I am going to open to you what 
no other eye has ever seen, must ever see — 
one page in the book of my life.” 

When she reached these words with a con- 
traction of the heart and a loud throbbing of 
the pulses in her ears, she got up and locked 
the letter in her bureau. Then, commanding 
herself, she went to the dining-room, and with 
her own hands prepared the supper table ; got 
out her finest linen, glass, silver; had the 
sconces lighted, extra candelabra brought in; 


354 


The Choir Invisible 


gave orders for especial dishes to be cooked ; 
and when everything was served, seated her 
guest at the foot of the table and let him pre- 
side as though it were his old rightful place. 
Ah, how like his father he was ! Several times 
when the father’s name was mentioned, he quite 
choked up with tears. 

At an early hour he sought rest from the 
fatigue of travel. She was left alone. The 
house was quiet. She summoned the negro 
girl who slept on the floor in her room and who 
was always with her of evenings : 

You can go to the cabin till bedtime. And 
when you come in, don’t make any noise. And 
don’t speak to me. I shall be asleep.” 

Then seating herself beside the little candle 
stand which mercifully for her had shed its 
light on so many books in the great lonely bed- 
chamber, she re-read those last words : 

And now I am going to open to you what 
no other eye has ever seen, must ever see — one 
page in the book of my life : 

“ Can you remember the summer I left Ken- 
tucky } On reaching Philadelphia I called 
on a certain family consisting, as I afterwards 
ascertained, of father, mother, and daughter; 


The Choir Invisible 


355 


and being in search of lodgings, I was asked 
to become a member of their household. This 
offer was embraced the more eagerly because I 
was sick for a home that summer and in need 
of some kind soul to lean on in my weakness. 
I had indeed been led for these reasons to seek 
their acquaintance — the father and mother hav- 
ing known my own parents early in life, so that 
they had seemed old friends even before I met 
them. You will thus understand how natural a 
haven with my loneliness and amid such memo- 
ries this house became to me, and upon what 
grounds I stood in my association with its mem- 
bers from the beginning. 

“When the lawsuit went against me and I 
was wrongfully thrown into jail for debt, their 
faithful interest only deepened. Very poor 
themselves, they would yet have made any 
sacrifice in my behalf. During the months of 
my imprisonment they were often with me, 
bringing every comfort and brightening the 
dulness of many an hour. 

“ Upon my release I returned gladly to their 
household, welcomed I could not say with what 
joyous affection. Soon afterwards I found a 
position in the office of a law firm and got my 
start in life. 


356 


The Choir Invisible 


“And now I cross the path of some things 
that cannot be written. But you who know 
what my life and character had been will nobly 
understand : remember your last words to me. 

“ One day I offered my hand to the daughter. 
I told her the whole truth : that there was some 
one else — not free ; that no one could take 
the place this other was filling at that moment, 
would fill always. Nevertheless, if she would 
accept me on these conditions, everything that 
it was in my power to promise she should have. 

“ She said that in time she would win the rest. 

“A few weeks later that letter came from you, 
bringing the intelligence that changed every- 
thing. (Do you remember my reply ^ I seem 
only this moment to have dropped the pen.) 
As soon as I could control myself, I told her 
that now you were free, that it was but justice 
and kindness alike to her and to me that I 
should give her the chance to reconsider the 
engagement. A week passed, I went again. 
I warned her how different the situation had 
become. I could promise less than before — 
I could not say how little. A month later I 
went again. 

“ Ah, well — that is all ! 


The Choir Invisible 


357 


“The summer after my marriage I travelled 
to Virginia regarding a landsuit. One day I 
rode far out of my course into the part of the 
country where you had lived. I remained some 
days strolling over the silent woods and fields, 
noting the bushes on the lawn, such as you had 
carried over into Kentucky, hunting out the 
quiet nooks where you were used to read in your 
girlhood. Those long, sweet, sacred summer 
days alone with you there before you were ever 
married ! 0 Jessica ! Jessica ! Jessica ! Jes- 

sica ! And to this day the sight of peach blos- 
soms in the spring — the rustle of autumn leaves 
under my feet ! Can you recall the lines of 
Malory ? * Men and women could love together 

seven yearSy a7id tJmi was love truth and faith- 
fulness' How many more than seven have 
I loved you! — you who never gave me any- 
thing but friendship, but who would in time, 
I hope, have given me everything if I had come 
back. Ah, I did come back! I have forever 
been coming back ! Many a time even now 
as soon as I have hurried through the joyous 
gateways of sleep, I come back over the moun- 
tains to you as naturally as though there had 
been no years to separate and to age. Let me 


358 


The Choir Invisible 


tell you all this ! My very life would be in- 
complete without it ! I owed something to you 
long before I owed anything to another : a 
duty can never set aside a duty. And as to 
what I have owed you since, it becomes more 
and more the noblest earthly debt that I shall 
ever leave unpaid. I did not know you per- 
fectly when we parted : I was too young, too 
ignorant of the world, too ignorant of many 
women. A man must have touched their 
coarseness in order to appreciate their refine- 
ment ; have been wounded by untruthfulness to 
understand their delicate honour; he must have 
been driven to turn his eyes mercifully away 
from their stain before he can ever look with 
all the reverence and gratitude of his heart and 
soul upon their brows of chastity. 

“But of my life otherwise. I take it for 
granted that you would like to know where I 
stand, what I have become, whether I have kept 
faith with the ideals of my youth. 

“ I have succeeded, perhaps reached now what 
men call the highest point of their worldly pros- 
perity, made good my resolve that no human 
power should defeat me. All that Macbeth had 
not I have : a quiet throne of my own, children, 


The Choir Invisible 


359 


wife, troops of friends, duties, honours, ease. 
There have been times when with natural mis- 
giving lest I had wandered too far these many 
summers on a sea of glory, I have prepared for 
myself the lament of Wolsey on his fall : yet ill 
fortune has not overwhelmed me or mine. 

“ All this prosperity, as the mere fruit of my 
toil, has been less easy than for many. I may 
not boast with the Apostle that I have fought 
a good fight, but I can say that I have fought a 
hard one. The fight will always be hard for 
any man who undertakes to conquer life with 
the few and simple weapons I have used and 
who will accept victory only upon such terms 
as I have demanded. For be my success small 
or great, it has been won without wilful wrong 
of a single human being and without inner com- 
promise or other form of self-abasement. No 
man can look me in the eyes and say I ever 
wronged him for my own profit ; none may 
charge that I have smiled on him in order to 
use him, or called him my friend that I might 
make him do for me the work of a servant. 

Do not imagine I fail to realize that I have 
added my full share to the general evil of the 
world : in part unconsciously, in part against 


36 o 


The Choir Invisible 


my conscious will. It is the knowledge of this 
influence of imperfection forever flowing from 
myself to all others, that has taught me charity 
with all the wrongs that flow from others toward 
me. As I have clung to myself despite the evil, 
so I have clung to the world despite all the 
evil that is in the world. To lose faith in men, 
not in humanity ; to see justice go down and 
not believe in the triumph of injustice ; for 
every wrong that you weakly deal another or 
another deals you to love more and more the 
fairness and beauty of what is right ; and so to 
turn with ever-increasing love from the imper- 
fection that is in us all to the Perfection that is 
above us all — the perfection that is God : this 
is one of the ideals of actual duty that you once 
said were to be as candles in my hand. Many 
a time this candle has gone out ; but as quickly 
as I could snatch any torch — with your sacred 
name on my lips — it has been relighted. 

*‘My candles are all beginning to burn low 
now. For as we advance far on into life, one 
by one our duties end, one by one the lights go 
out. Not much ahead of me now must lurk 
the great mortal changes, coming always nearer, 
always faster. As they approach, I look less 


The Choir Invisible 


361 

to my candles, more toward my lighthouses — 
those distant unfailing beacons that cast their 
rays over the stormy sea of this life from the 
calm ocean of the Infinite. I know this : that 
if I should live to be an old man, my duties 
ended and my candles gone, it is these that 
will shine in upon me in that vacant darkness. 
And I have this belief : that if we did but rec- 
ognize them aright, these ideals at the close of 
life would become one with the ideals of our 
youth. We lost them as we left mortal youth 
behind ; we regain them as we enter upon youth 
immortal. 

“ If I have kept unbroken faith with any of 
mine, thank you. And thank God ! ” 


THE END 


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V 







By the Same Author. 


Summer in Arcady. 

A TALE OF NATURE. 

BY 

JAMES LANE ALLEN, 

Author of**A Kentucky Cardinal " A/termath" “ The Blue Grass 
Region of Kentucky” etc. 


i6mo. Cloth. $1.25. 


y This story by James Lane Allen is one of the gems of the season. It is 
artistic in its setting, realistic and true to nature and life in its descriptions, 
dramatic, pathetic, tragic, in its incidents; indeed, a veritable gem that must 
become classic. It is difficult to give an outline of the story; it is one of the 
stories which do not outline; it must be read.” — Boston Daily Advertiser. 

“ The close communion and sympathy with Nature, and the noble inter- 
pretation of her wayward moods and changing phases, manifested in ‘ A 
Kentucky Cardinal ’ and ‘ Aftermath ’ find nobler, sweeter, ampler expression 
in the luminous, sunlit, sun-flushed pages of his new story.” — The Book- 
man. 

“ The book continually gladdens the sesthetic sense with its luxurious 
and chaste objective imagery. It shows a marked advance in the author’s 
power of vivid dialogue, and though the nature of its materials will prevent 
its being called the most beautiful of his stories, it is yet likely to attain the 
widest circulation and to be a stepping-stone to higher things.” — The 
Chicago Tribune. 

“James Lane Allen has endeared himself to thousands of readers. A 
master of language, gifted with a true poetic temperament, a lover of human- 
ity, and having high ideals for the art of writing as well as for the art of liv- 
ing, his pages reveal the deep, strong character, capable of keen insight, yet 
of sympathetic helpfulness, full of a strong and unusually appreciative love 
of nature and a spirit of good will and cheer that aflbrds encouragement to 
weary men. Every book from his pen is a genuine fountain of life.” — The 
Hartford Post. 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 

66 FIFTH AVENUE, HEW YORK. 














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